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R E PORT
( > F T 1 1 E
INTERNATIONAL
Council ofWomen,
ASS EM 1! I. B I) B V T II E
National Woman Suffrage Association,
WASHINGTON, D. C,
r. S. OF AMERICA,
March 25 to April 1, 1888.
Condensed from the Stenographic Report made by Mary F. Seymour and Assistants, for
The Woman's TRIBUNE, published daily during the Council.
NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION,
WASHINGTON, O. C:
RUPUS H. DARBY, PRINTER.
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[UITIVBRSIT'
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PRICE OF REPORT.
Unbound copy, ........ 50 cts.
" " sent by mail, . . . . . . . 60 "
Bound copy (engraving of Lucretia Mott), . . . . 75 "
" " " sent by mail, . . .90 "
For sale in : JV ^33
Boston — At Office of Woman's Journal, 3 Park street.
New York— Office of Mary H. Seymour, 38 Park Row (Potter Building).
Washington, D. C. — From Mrs. Jane H. Spofford (Treasurer of N. W. S. A.),
Riggs House.
Philadelphia— From Rachel G. Foster (Cor. Sec'y of N. W. S. A.), 748
N. 19th street.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Page.
Origin of Council, ......... 9
Thk Cai.l, ......... 10
The Programme, . . . . . . . . .11
Hymns, .......... 19
Reception to Officers and Delegates, . . . . .23
March 25 — Sunday Afternoon— Religious Service, . . . 24-29
Sermon, The Heavenly Vision, Rev. Annie H. Shaw, . . 24
March 26— Morning Session — Formal Opening of The Council, . 30-50
Council Called to Order hy Miss Anthony, . .30
Address of Welcome, Mrs. Stanton, .... 31
Reading of Letters and Telegrams of Greeting, . . 39
S
Introduction of Foreign and American Delegates, . 44
Reading of List of Associations Represented at the Coun-
cil, . . . . . . . . . 49
Announcement of Committee on Organization, . 50
March 26 — Evening Session — Education, .... 51-82 •
Higher Education for Women in the United States, May
Wright Sewall, . . . . 51 ^
The Women of India, Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, . . 63
The Kindergarten in Its Development of Faculty, Sarah
B. Cooper, ....... 67
Retrospection, Louisa Reed Stowell, . . . .72
Co-Education, Rena A. Michaels, .... 75
College Fellowships for Women, Cora A. Benneson, . 77
Institutive Power, Martha McLellan Brown, . . 80
March 27 — Morning Session — Philanthropies, . . . 83-109
What Unitarian Women are Doing, Isabel C. Barrows, 83
Woman as a Missionary, Jennie Fowler Willing, . . 86
Report of Western Women's Unitarian Conference, Vic-
toria M. Richardson. * . - t 4 88
iv Table of Contents.
March 27 — Adams, Laura McNeir, . . . . . .88
Prison Reform Work of St. Lazare, Paris, Madame Isa-
bella Bogelot, ...... 90
Hospitals Managed by and for Women, Ednah D. Cheney, 95
Missionary Work, Harriet N. Morris, . . . .98
The Work and Objects of the Woman's National Indian
Association, Amelia S. Quinton, . . . 100
The Woman's Relief Corps, E. Florence Barker, . . 101
TnE Red Cross, Clara Barton, .... 103
Women's Relief Associations, Emily S. Richards, . . 107
March 27 — Evening Session — Temperance, .... 110-128
Women in Temperance, Frances E. Willard, . .110
World's Woman's Temperance Union, Hannah Whit-
all Smith, . . . . . .114
Toronto W. C. T. IT., Bessie Starr Keeper, . . . 116
How to Reach the Children, Anna Gordon, . . 118
The Neglected Rich, Frances E. Harper, . . .119
Police Matrons, Susan H. Barney, .... 120
National Temperance Hospital, Dr. Mary Weeks Bur-
nett, ........ 123
The Temperance Temple, Matilda B. Carse. . . 125
Our Reasons, Mary H. Hunt, ..... 127
March 28 — Morning Session — Industries, ..... 129-164
Industrial Gains of Women During the Last Half-Cen-
tury, Mary A. Livermore, ..... 131
Women in the Grange, Anna M. Worden, . . . 137
Women in the Knights of Labor, Huldah B. Loud, . . 143
The Working Women of To-Day, Helen Campbell, . 146
Co-Operation, the Law of the New Civilization, Lita
Barney Sayles, ...... 152
What the Knights of Labor are Doing for Women,
Leonora M. Barry. ..... 153
Women as Farmers, Esther L. Warner, . . . 156
Story of the Lowell Offering, M. Louise Thomas. . 161
Communication from the Federation of Labor Unions, . 163.
Table of Contents. v
March 28— Evening Session— Professions, .... 165-188
Women as Educators, Prof. Rena A. Michaels, . . 165
Woman in Journalism, Laura C. Hollow ay, . . 167
Woman in Medicine, Dr. Sarah H. Stevenson, . . . 169 —
Woman in Law, Ada M. Bittenbender, . . . 178
Woman in the Ministry, Rev. Ada C. Bowles, . . . 180
Report of Woman's International Press Association,
Martha R. Field, ..... 181
Women in Journalism, Marion A. McBride, . . . 183
An Idea and its Results, Aurelia H. Mohl, . . 184
Woman and Finance, Matilda B. Carse, . . . 186
Mai (ii 29 — Moaning Session — Organization, .... 189-225
The Power of Organization, Julia Ward Howe, . . 189
Address on Organization, Mary F. Eastman, . . 195
Work of Women's Educational and Industrial Union,
Abby Morton Diaz, ...... 198
Report of Free Baptist Missionary Society, Marilla .M.
Hills, 200
Report of Danish Woman's Union for the Protection of
Young Girls and Lonely Women, Ada M. Fred-
ERIKSEN, ....... 200
The Danish Woman's Association, Kirstine Freder-
iksen, . . . . . . . . 203
Woman's Education in Denmark. Ada M. Frederiksen, 206
Woman's Condition in Italy, Fanny Zampini Salazaro, . 208
The Work of Sorosis, M. Louise Thomas, . . . 215
Women's Clubs,. Jennie C. Croly .... 217
The Woman Movement in Germany, .... 219
Address on Organization, May Wright Sewall, . . 220
Address on Organization, Frances E. Willard, . . 222
March 39— Evening Session— Legal Conditions, . . . 226-245
Leo a r. Disabilities, Lillie Deverecx Blake, . . . 226
Legal Conditions of Women in the Three Kingdoms,
Alice Scatcherd, ...... 229
Legal Conditions of Indian Women, Alice C. Fletcher, . 237
Law in the^Family, Matilda Joslyn Gage, . . . 241
vi Table of Contents.
March 29— Address by Lucy Stone, ..... 241
March 30— Morning Session— Social Purity, .... 246-291
The Truth Shall Make You Free, Elizabeth Lisle Saxon, 248
The International Federation for the Abolition of
State Regulation of Vice, Anna Rice Powell, . 252
Letter from Josephine Butler, .... 257
Address on Social Purity, Laura Ormiston Chant, . . 264
The Moral Education Society of Boston, Caroline M.
Frazar, . . » . . . . .272
The Starting Point, Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, . . 2/3
Address, Social Purity, Harriette R. Shattuck, . . 276
The Women of Norway, Sophia Magelsson Groth, . 278
Address, Clara Cleghorne Hoffman, .... 283
Paper, Marriage Reform, Lucinda B. Chandler, . 284
Address, Frances E. Willard, ..... 286
Letters, ........ 289
March 30 — Evening Session — Political Conditions, . . . 292-321
The Constitutional Rights of Women in the United
States, Isabella Beecher Hooker, . . . 292
Women in Politics, J. Ellen Foster, . . . 304
Political Parties and Woman Suffrage, Harriet H.
Robinson, ....... 306
School Suffrage in Massachusetts, Martha A. Everett, 309
School Suffrage, Rev. Annie H. Shaw, . . . 311
The Flag at Half-Mast, Anna Randall Diehl, . . 313
Municipal Suffrage, Laura M. Johns, . . . 315
Address, Ellen M. S. Marble, ..... 318
Address, Frances E. Willard, . . . . 319
March 31 — Morning Session — Conference of Pioneers, . . 322-368
Address, Elizabeth Cady Stanton. .... 322
Song, John W. Hutchinson, ..... 326
Address, Frederick Douglass, .... 327
Lucy Stone, ...... 331
Henry B. Blackwell, .... 335
Rev. Antoinette B. Blackwell, . . . 340
Robert Purvis, . ... 342
Table of Contents. vii
March 31 — Address, Mary Grew, ...... 344
" Matilda Joslyn Gage, .... 347
" Hon. Samuel C. Pomeroy, .... 348
" and Poem, Grace Greenwood, . .' . 353
Letters from Pioneers, ...... 357
March 31— Evening Session — Political Conditions, . . . 369-399
Sex in Brain, Helen Gardener, .... 369
Woman Suffrage in England, Mrs. Abhton Dilke, . 382
Woman's Work in Finland, Alexandra Gripenberg, . 388
Address, Zadel B. Gustafson, ..... 394
Sentimentalism in Politics, Clara Neymann, . 398
April 1 — Afternoon Session — Religious Symposium, . . 400-424
Woman in the Early Christian Church, Matilda Joslyn
G.\(iK, ....... 400
What Religious Truths can be Established by Science
and Philosophy, Rev. Antoinette B. Blackwell, 407
God is Love, Elizabeth Boynton Hakbert, . . 415
Address, Isabella Beecher Hookek, . . . 418
The Power of Thought, Elizabeth G. Stuaut, . . 420
Address, Ednah D. Cheney, . . . . . 420
Frances E. Willakd, ..... 422
April 1 — Evening Session — Close of the Council, . . . 425-438
Address, Madame Isabelle Bogelot, .... 425
Alli Trygg, ...... 425
The Moral Power of the Ballot, Zerelda G. Wallace, . 428
Closing Address, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, . . . 431
Letters, .......... 439
Report of Committee of Arrangements, ..... 447
Committees of Council, ........ 456
Social Events of the Week, ...... 457
Appendix, .......... 459
Index, .......... 401
Page 9. For Miss Helen Bright Clarke, read Mrs. Helen Bright Clarke.
30. For Monday, March 25, read March 26.
34. For eventually (line lOi read essentially.
49. For World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union read World's Woman's Tem-
perance Union.
50. The list of AstWs represented should i«rfw<fe, New England Hospital for Women
and Children. Delegate, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney.
93. In second line read de for du.
1 14. See erratum page 49.
145. Bead Paine lor Payne.
166. Bead Louise Beed Stowell for Bead.
165 and 181. Bead Dioteme for Diatema and for Diotema.
313. In line 7 read "which they say we women" for "which we say we women."
318. In line 8 read Marcus Agrates for Lyssipus.
343. In line 4 read Mr. Blackwell for Mrs. Blackwell.
356 and 364. Bead Chace for Chase.
407. Bead Antoinette Brown Blackwell for Antoinette L. Brown.
455. In foot note read Emily S. for Jane S. Bichards.
458. Bead Dr. Ewing Whittle for Whipple.
RE PORT
OF THE
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN.
Visiting England and France in the spring of 1882, Mrs. Stan-
ton conceived the idea of an International Council of Women
interested in the movement for suffrage, and pressed its con.
sideration on the leading reformers in those countries. A few
accepted the idea, and when Miss Anthony arrived in England,
some months later, they discussed the question fully with each
other ; and, seeing that such a convention was both advisable
and practicable, they resolved to call it in the near future.
On the eve of their departure from England, at a reception
given them in Liverpool, the subject was presented and favor-
ably received. Among the guests were Priscilla Bright
McLaren, Margaret Bright Lucas, Alice Scatcherd and Mar-
garet E. Parker. The initiative steps for an International
Council were then taken and a committee of correspondence
appointed.*
Returning to America, it was decided, in consultation with
friends, to celebrate the fourth decade of the woman suffrage
movement by calling an International Council. At its nine-
teenth annual convention, January, 1887, the National Woman
Suffrage Association resolved to assume the entire responsibility
♦The following is the report of the action prepared that evening- by Mrs. Parker : "At a
large and influential gathering of the friends of woman suffrage, at Parliament Terrace, Liv-
erpool, November 16, 1883, convened by E. Whittle, M. D., to meet Mrs. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony prior to their return to America, a resolution was pro-
posed by Mrs. Margaret E. Parker, of Penketh (near Warrington), seconded by Mrs. McLaren,
of Edinburgh, and unanimously passed:
"That this meeting, recognizing that union is strength and that the time has come when
women all over the world should unite in the just demand for their political enfranchise-
ment; therefore
" Itesoived, That we do here appoint a committee of correspondence, preparatory to forming
an International Woman Suffrage Association.
" Kesolved, That the committee consist of the following friends, with power to add to their
number.
" For the American Center— Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Miss Susan B. Anthony, Miss Rachel
G. Foster. London Center— Mrs. Peter A. Taylor, Mrs. Margaret B. Lucas, Miss Helen Taylor,
Miss Henrietta Muller, Miss Caroline A. Biggs, Mr. and Mrs. Charles McLaren, Miss Eliza Orme,
Miss Rebecca Moore, London; Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, Basingstoke. Manchester >'entr—
Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Bright, Manchester; Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Thomasson, Bolton; Mrs. Mar-
garet E. Parker, Pi nketh ; Dr. and Mrs. Whittle, Liverpool; Mrs. Oliver Scatcherd, Leeds;
Mr. and Mis. Walter McLaren, Bradford; Mrs. Philips, Liverpool ; Mr. and Mrs. Crook, Bol-
ton ; Mr. Berners, Mr. Russell, Liverpool ; Miss Becker, Manchester. Bristol Center— Miss
Helen Bright Clarke, Street ; Mrs. Alfred Ostler, Birmingham ; Miss Priestman, Bristol,
Center for Scot 'I nd— Mrs. Duncan McLaren, Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol, Miss Eliza Wigham
Edinburgh. Center far Ireland— Miss Tod, Belfast; Mrs. Haslam,X)ublin. Center fo~ France—
M'lle Hubertine Auclert, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Stanton, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Paris."
2
10 International Council of Women.
and to extend the invitation to all associations of women in
the trades, professions and reforms, as well as those advocat-
ing political rights.
The herculean task of making all the necessary arrange-
ments fell chiefly on Miss Anthony, Miss Rachel G. Foster, and
Mrs. May Wright Sewall, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Spofford being
in Europe. To say nothing of the thought, anxiety, time, and
force expended, we can appreciate in some measure the mag-
nitude of the undertaking by its financial cost of over $10,000.
The grand assemblage of women coming from many coun-
tries and latitudes proves that the call for such a convention
was opportune, while the order and dignity of the proceedings
prove the women worthy the occasion. No one doubts now
the wisdom of this initiative step nor the added power women
have gained over popular thought through this International
Council.
Early in June, 1887, the following call was issued :
INTERNATIONAL
COUNCIL OF WOMEN.
The first organized demand for equal educational, industrial, professional,
and political rights for women was made in a convention held at Seneca
Falls, New fork (U. S. A.), in the year 1848.
To celebrate the fortieth anniversary of this event, an International Coun-
cil of Women will be convened under the auspices of the National Woman
Suffrage Association, in Albaugh's Opera House, Washing' )n, D. C, on
March 25, 1888.
It is impossible to over-estimate the far-reaching influence of such a coun-
cil. An interchange of opinions on the great questions now agitating the
world will rouse women to new thought, will intensify their love of liberty,
and will give them a realizing sense of the power of combination.
However the governments, religions, laws, and customs of nations may
differ, all are agreed on one point, namely, man's sovereignty in the State,
in the Church, and in the Home. In an International Council women may
hope to devise new and more effective methods for securing the equality and
justice which they have so long and so earnestly sought. Such a Council
will impress the important lesson that the position of women anywhere
affects their position everywhere. Much is said of universal brotherhood,
but, for weal or for woe, more subtle and more binding is universal sisterhood.
Women, recognizing the disparity between their labors and their achieve-
Programme. 11
ments, will no doubt agree that they have been trammeled by their political
subordination. Those active in great philanthropic enterprises sooner or
later realize that, so long as women are not acknowledged to be the political
equals of men, their judgment on public questions will have but little weight.
It is, however, neither intended nor desired that discussions in the Inter-
national Council shall be limited to questions touching the political rights
of women. Formal invitations requesting the appointment of delegates will
be issued to representalive organizations in every department of woman's
work. Literary Clubs, Art and Temperance Unions, Labor Leagues, Mis-
sionary, Peace, and Moral Purity Societies, Charitable, Professional, Educa-
tional, and Industrial Associations will thus be offered equal opportunity
with Suffrage Societies to be represented in what should be the ablest and
most imposing body of women ever assembled.
The Council will continue eight days, and its fifteen public sessions will
afford ample opportunity for reporting woman's work and progress in all
parts of the world during the past forty years. It is hoped that all friends of
the advancement of women will lend their support to this undertaking.
On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
Elizabeth Cadv Stanton, President, 8 W. 40th St., New York.
Susan B. Anthony, First Vice-President,. Rochester, N. Y.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Second Vice-President, Fayetteville, N. Y.
May Wright Sewall, Ch. Ex. Com., 343 N. Penn. St., Indianapolis, Ind.
Ellen H. Sheldon, Recording Secretary, 811 9th St. N.W., Washington, D. C.
Jane H. Spofford, Treasurer, Riggs House, Washington, D. C.
Rachel G. Foster, Cor. Sec, 748 N. 19th St., Philadelphia, Pa.
June 1, 1887.
After an extensive correspondence, both in Europe and
America, the following programme was prepared :
Sttnday, March 25.
2.30 OP. "ML.
RELIGIOUS SERVICE.
Hymn — Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford.
Reading of Scriptures — Rev. Ada C. Bowles. 26th Chapter of Acts.
Prayer — Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.
Hymn — Rev. Annie H. Shaw.
Sermon — Rev. Annie H. Shaw.
Subject: The Heavenly Vision.
Hymn — Rev. Amanda Deyo.
Benediction— Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.
ADMISSION FREE.
12 International Council of Women.
Monday, March 26.
10.00 A. M.
MORNING SESSION.
FORMAL OPENING OF THE COUNCIL.
Music — The Promised Land.
Invocation — Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Del. American W. S. A.
Address — Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Pres. National W. S. A. of America.
Greetings and Letters to the Council.
Announcement of Committee on Permanent Organization.
Music.
EVENING SESSION.
7.30 P. M.
EDUCATION.
Music by the Orchestra.
7.45 Invocation — Rev. Annie H. Shaw.
May Wright Sewall, Principal Indianapolis Classical School for Girls.
Higher Education for Women in the United States.
8.15 Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati.
The Women of India.
8.35 Sarah B. Cooper, Pres. Golden Gate Kindergarten Association.
(Paper.) The Kindergarten in its Development of Faculty.
8.50 Louisa Reed Stowell, M. S., F. R. M. S., Pres. and Del. of Western Collegiate
Alumnse.
Retrospection.
9.00 Rena A. Michaels, Ph. D., Dean of Woman's College, Northwestern University.
Co-Education.
9.10 Alexandra Gripenberg, Del. of Finnish Women's Association.
9.20 Ada M. Frederiksen, Del. of Danish Women's Association.
(Paper.) Report of Danish Women's Association'
9.30 Cora A. Benneson, A. M., LL. B., (Mich. University), Fellow in History,
Bryn Mawr College.
College Fellowships for Women.
9.40 Martha McLellan Brown, Vice-President Wesleyan College, Cincinnati.
Institutive Power.
Programme. 13
Tuesday, March 27.
MORNING SESSION.
10.00 A. M.
PHILANTHROPIES.
Harriette R. Shattuck, Pres. of Nat'l W. S. Ass'n for Mass., Presiding.
Invocation — Zerelda G. Wallace.
Music.
10.10 Isabel C. Barrows, Del. Woman's Auxiliary Conference, Unitarian Ass'n.
The Work of Unitarian Women.
Victoria Richardson, Del. Western Women's Unitarian Conference.
10.30 Jennie Fowler Willing.
(Paper.) Woman as Missionary.
10.40 Laura McNeir, Del. and Pres. Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic.
11.05 Isabelle Bogelot, Del. and Dir. Prison Reform Work of St. Lazare, Paris.
Work of the St. Lazare.
11.25 Ednah D. Cheney, Pres. and Del. New England Hospital for Women and
Children. Hospitals Managed by and for Women.
11.35 Harriet N. Morris, Ex-Principal Public School No. 39, Brooklyn.
Missionary Work.
11.45 Emily S. Richards, Del. Women's Associations of Utah.
11.55 Amelia S. Quinton, Del. and Pres. Woman's National Indian Ass'n.
Work and Objects of the Woman's Indian Association.
12.05 E. Florence Barker, Del. and Ex-Pres. Woman's National Relief Corps of
the Grand Army of the Republic.
12.15 Clara Barton, Del. and Nat'l Pres. American Association of the Red Cross.
The Red Cross Society.
Music.
EVENING SESSION.
7.30 P. M.
TEMPERANCE.
Music by the Orchestra.
7.45 Invocation — Judith Ellen Foster.
Frances E. Willard, Del. and Pres. National W. C. T. U.
Woman and Temperance.
8.15 Hannah Whitall Smith, Del. and American Sec. World's W. C. T. U.
The Latest Evolution of the W. C. T. U.
8.30 Bessie Starr Keefer, Del. Toronto W. C. T. U.
8.40 Anna Gordon.
Haiv to Reach the Children.
8.50 Frances E. W. Harper.
What Shall Be Done with the Neglected Rich.
9.00 Susan H. Barney, Del. and Nat'l Supt. Prison, Jail, Police and Almshouse
Work of the W. C. T. U.
Police Matrons.
9.15 Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett, Del. Nat'l Temperance Hospital and Med
College Ass'n.
The Temperance Hospital.
9.25 Matilda B. Carse.
The Temperance Temple.
9.30 Mary H. Hunt, Nat'l Supt. Scientific Instruction, W. C. T. U.
Our Reasons.
9.45 " Home, Sweet Home," sung by the audience.
14 International Council of Women.
Wednesday, March 28.
10.00 A. M.
MORNING SESSION
INDUSTRIES.
Laura M. Johns, Pres. Kansas Equal Suffrage Ass'n, Presiding.
Invocation — Rev. Annie H. Shaw.
Music.
10.15 Mary A. Livermore, Del. American Woman Suffrage Ass'n.
Woman's Industrial Gains During the Last Half Century.
10.55 Anna M. Worden, Worthy Master of Vineland Grange, No. II.
Women in the Grange.
1 1. 15 Hulda B. Loud.
Women in the Knights of Labor.
11.30 Helen Campbell, Vice-President Sociologic Society of America.
(Paper.) Women in the Trades.
Lita Barey Sayles, Del. and Gen'l Sec. Sociologic Society of America.
11.50 Leonora M. Barry, Del. and Organizer of the Knights of Labor.
What the Knights of Labor are Doing for Women.
12.05 Esther L. Warner.
Women as Farmers.
Music.
EVENING SESSION.
7.30 P. M.
PROFESSIONS
Music by the Orchestra.
7.45 Invocation.
Prof. Rena A. Michaels.
Women as Educators.
Woman in Journalism.
Woman in Medicine.
8.00 Laura C. Holloway.
8.10 Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson.
Violin Solo — Maud Powell.
8.30 Ada M. Bittenbender, Nat" 1 Sup't Legislation and Petitions of W. C. T. U.
Woman in Law.
8.40 Rev. Ada C. Bowles.
Woman in the Ministry,
8.50 Martha R. Field, Del. Woman's International Press Ass'n.
9.00 Marion McBride, Sec. International Press Ass'n. (Paper.)
9.10 Amelia Hadley Mohl, Del. Woman's National Press Ass'n.
9.20 Matilda B. Carse.
Woman and Finance.
Programme. 15
Thiers day, March 2g.
MORNING SESSION.
10.00 A. M.
ORGANIZATION.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Vice-Pres. at Large, Nat'l W. S. A., Presiding.
Invocation — Isabella Beecher Hooker.
Music.
10. i s Julia Ward Howe, Del. and Pres. Association for the Advancement of Women.
The Power of Organization.
10.45 Mary F. Eastman, Del. Association for the Advancement of Women.
1 1.05 Alexandra Gripenberg, Del. of the Finnish Women's Association.
The Work of Finnish Women.
11.25 Abby Morton Diaz, Del. and Pres. Women's Educational and Industrial
Union (Boston).
Women's Educational and Industrial Unions.
Marilla M. Hills, Del. Woman's Missionary Society Freewill Baptist Church
11.40 Ada M. Frederiksen, Del. of Danish Woman's Association and Danish
Women's Society for the Protection of Young Girls. (Paper.)
12.00 Fanny Zampini Salazaro, Editor "Woman's Review" (Rome).
(Paper.) The Women of Italy.
12.20 M. Louise Thomas, Pres. and Del. Sorosis.
The Work of Sorosis.
12.30 Jennie C. Croly (Jennie June), Del. and Ex.- Pres. Sorosis.
May Wright Sewall.
Frances E. Willard.
12.50 Susan B. Anthony.
Music.
EVENING SESSION.
7.30 P. M.
LEGAL CONDITIONS.
Music by the Orchestra.
7.45 Invocation — Susan H. Barney.
Lillie Devereux Blake, Pres. N. Y. State W. S. A.
Legal Disabilities of Women.
8.15 Alice Scatcherd, Del. of Edinburgh Nat'l Society for Women's Suffrage, and
the Darlington, Yorkshire and Southport Women's Liberal Ass'ns.
Legal Conditions of Women in the Three Kingdoms.
8.45 Alice Fletcher, Special Indian Agent under the Severalty Bill.
Legal Conditions of Indian Women
9.15 Matilda Joslyn Gage.
Law in the Family.
9.25 Lucy Stone, Del. American Woman Suffrage Association.
16 International Council of Women.
Friday, March jo.
MORNING SESSION.
SOCIAL PURITY (SESSION FOR WOMEN ALONE).
10.00 A. M.
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Vice-Pres. Nat'l W. S. A. for Illinois, Presiding.
Invocation — Martha McLellan Brown.
Music.
10.25 Elizabeth Lisle Saxon, Vice-Pres. Nat'l W. S. A. for Tennessee.
10.45 Anna Rice Powell, Del. N. Y. Com. for the Prevention of State Regulation of
Vice.
The International Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice.
1 1 .05 Laura Ormiston Chant, Del. of Edinburgh Nat'l Society for Women's Suffrage,
and Nat'l Vigilance Ass'n, England.
11.25 Caroline M. S. Frazar, Del. Moral Education Society, Boston.
11.30 Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, Pres. District of Columbia Moral Ed. Society.
The Starting Point.
Dr. Ruth M. Wood, Physician Industrial School, Salt Lake City, Utah.
11.45 Harriette R. Shattuck.
11.55 Sophia Magelsson Groth, Del. Norwegian W. S. Society.
12.05 Clara Cleghorne Hoffman, Del. Nat'l W. C. T. U.
12.15 Frances E. Willard.
Music.
EVENING SESSION.
7.30 P. M.
POLITICAL CONDITIONS.
Music by the Orchestra.
7.45 Invocation — Rev. Amanda Deyo.
Isabella Beecher Hooker, Vice-Pres. of Nat'l \V. S. A. for Connecticut.
Constitutional Rights of the Women of the United States.
8.30 J. Ellen Foster.
Women in Politics.
8.40 Harriet H. Robinson, Mem. Ex. Com. Nat'l W. S. A.
Political Parties and Woman Suffrage.
8.50 Martha A. Everett, Del. Mass. School Suffrage Ass'n.
9.00 Rev. Annie H. Shaw, Sup't Franchise Dep't Nat'l W. C. T. U.
School Suffrage.
9.10 Laura M. Johns.
Municipal Suffrage.
9.20 Ellen M. S. Marble, Pres. Minn. W. S. Ass'n.
9.40 Frances E. Willard.
Programme. Ill
Safotrday, March ji.
MORNING SESSION.
10.00 A. M.
CONFERENCE OF THE PIONEERS.
Silent Invocation.
Song — Greeting to the Pioneers, John W. Hutchinson, Lynn, Mass.
Addresses :
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, New York.
Frederick Douglass, Washington, D. C.
Hymn — The Reformers, John G. Whittier.
Lucy Stone, Boston, Mass.
Henry B. Blackwell, Boston, Mass.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Elizabeth, N. J.
Robert Purvis, Philadelphia, Pa.
Song — The Lost Chord, Laura Ormiston Chant.
Mary Grew, Philadelphia, Pa.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Syracuse, N. Y.
Samuel C. Pomeroy, Washington, D. C.
Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N. Y.
Song — One Hundred Years Hence, John W. Hutchinson; words by Frances
Dana Gage.
Among the Pioneers on the stage will be : Amy Post, Sarah H. Willis, Mary H.
Hallowell, Sarah Anthony Burtis, Mary S. Anthony, Clemence S. Lozier, M. D., Dr«
Harriet N. Austin, Olive Frazer Ingalls, Albert O. Wilcox, New York; M. Adeline
Thomson, Janette Jackson, Dr. Hannah Longshore, Emily Winslow Taylor, Sarah H.
Pierce, Dinah Mendenhall, Samuel Pennock, Pennsylvania ; Sarah H. Southwick, Anna
Gardner, Catharine Swan Spear, Sarah E. Wall, Massachusetts ; Emily P.Collins, Charlotte
Joy Mann, Connecticut ; Susan E. Wattles, Kansas; Esther Wattles, Ohio; Virginia L
Minor, Missouri ; Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, Dr. Susan Edson, Jane B. Archibald, Julia A
Wilbur, Caroline II. Dall, Grace Greenwood, Washington, D. C; Catharine A. F. Stebbins,
Michigan; Marilla M. Hills, Neio Hampshire ; Caroline A. Putnam, Virginia; Catharine
V. Waite, Illinois.
Music — Auld Lang Syne.
EVENING SESSION
7.30 P. M.
POLITICAL CONDITIONS.
Music by the Orchestra.
7.45 Invocation — Laura Ormiston Chant.
Helen H. Gardener.
Sex in Brain.
8.15 Mrs. Ashton Dilke, Del. Newcastle Women's Liberal Ass'n, England.
8.45 Alexandra Gripenberg, Del. Finnish Women's Union.
9.05 Zadll B. Gustafson, Del. Nat'l Prohibition Movement, Great Britain.
9.20 Clara Neymann.
Sentimenlalism in Politics.
18 International Council of Women.
Sunday, April i .
AFTERNOON SESSION.
2.30 P. M.
RELIGIOUS SYMPOSIUM.
Susan B. Anthony, VicePres. at Large, Nat'l W. S. A., Presiding.
Invocation — Mrs. J. P. Newman.
Hymn — Greeting.
2.40 Matilda Joslyn Gage.
Women in the Early Christian Church.
2.50 Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.
Science and Religious Truth.
3.15 Caroline H. Dall.
3.25 Elizabeth Boynton Harbert.
3.45 Hymn.
4.05 Isabella Beecher Hooker.
4.15 Julia Ward Howe.
4.25 Elizabeth G. Stuart.
4.35 Ednah D. Cheney.
4.45 Frances E. Willard.
Hymn — The Church Universal.
EVENING SESSION.
7.45 P- M.
CLOSE OF THE COUNCIL.
Invocation — Mary H. Hunt.
Music.
Isabella Bogelot.
Alli Trygg, of Finland.
Zerelda G. Wallace.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Music. ,
ADJOURNMENT.
The Moral Power of the Ballot.
Closing Address.
Programme.
19
}tymi?5.
1. God Shall Lead Us On.
julia mills dunn.
Tune— "John Brown."
From Wyoming's rocky valleys to the
wild New Hampshire hills,
From our Northern lakes of silver to the
sunny Southern rills,
Lo ! the clarion call of Freedom all the
listening silence thrills !
Our God shall lead us on.
Chorus.
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah !
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah !
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah !
Our God shall lead us on.
We have heard the voice of Freedom from
that far-off Western shore,
We have heard the echoes calling, as our
fathers heard of yore.
Let us sing its stirring music, " Equal
rights forevermore ! "
And God shall lead us on. — Chorus.
We have watched the dawning splendor
of a promise in the skies,
We have heard his accents tender, " Lo !
ye faithful ones, arise ! "
" Who would equal justice render, I will
nevermore despise,"
" Your God shall lead you on." — Cho.
2. Prayer.
james montgomery.
Music— "St. Agnes."
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpressed ;
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear;
The upward glancing of the eye,
When none but God is near.
Prayer is the simplest form of speech
That infant lips can try;
Prayer the sublimest strains that reach
The Majesty on high.
3. The Reformers,
john g. whittier.
Tune—'' Ortonville."
O pure Reformers ! not in vain
Your trust in human-kind;
The good which bloodshed could not gain,
Your peaceful zeal shall find.
The truths ye urge are borne abroad
By every wind and tide;
The voice of nature and of God
Speaks out upon your side.
The weapons which your hands have found
Are those which Heaven hath wrought —
Light, Truth, and Love; your battle-
ground ,
The free, broad field of Thought.
Oh, may no selfish purpose break
The beauty of your plan;
No lie from throne or altar shake
Your steady faith in man !
Press on ! and if we may not share
The glory of your fight,
We'll ask at least, in earnest prayer,
God's blessing on the right.
4. Auld Lang Syne,
john w. chadwick.
Music— "Au d Lang Syne."
It singeth low in every heart;
We hear it each and all —
A song of those who answer not,
However we may call.
They throng the silence of the breast;
We s«e them as of yore —
The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet,
Who walk with us no more.
'Tis hard to take the burden up,
When these have laid it down;
They brighten all the joys of life,
They soften every frown.
But, oh ! 'tis good to think of them
When we are troubled sore;
Thanks be to God that such have been,
Although they are no more !
More homelike seems the vast unknown
Since they have entered there;
To follow them were not so hard,
Wherever they may fare.
They can not be where God is not,
On any sea or shore;
Whate'er betides, thy love abides,
Our God forevermore !
20
International Council of Women.
5. Lo! He Cometh.
JAMES MONTGOMERY.
Tune—" Missionary Hymn."
God comes, with succor speedy,
To those who suffer wrong;
To help the poor and needy,
And bid the weak be strong;
He comes to break oppression,
And set the captive free;
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity.
To Him shall prayer unceasing,
And daily vows ascend;
His kingdom still increasing,
A kingdom without end.
The tide of time shall never
His covenant remove;
His name shall stand forever,
His great, best name of Love.
>. The Word of the Lord Abideth
Forever.
samuel longfellow.
Music—" Worthing'."
God of ages and of nations !
Every race and every time
Hath received thine inspirations,
Glimpses of thy truth sublime.
Ever spirits, in rapt vision,
Passed the heavenly veil within;
Ever hearts, bowed in contrition,
Found salvation from their sin.
Reason's noble aspiration,
Truth in growing clearness saw;
Conscience spoke its condemnation,
Or proclaimed the Eternal Law.
"While thine inward revelations
Told thy saints their prayers were
heard,
Prophets to the guilty nations
Spoke thine everlasting word.
Lord, that word abideth ever;
Revelation is not sealed;
Answering unto man's endeavor,
Truth and Right are still revealed.
That which came to ancient sages,
Greek, Barbarian, Roman, Jew,
Written in the heart's deep pages,
Shines to-day, forever new !
7. Old and New.
j. g. whittiek.
Tune—" Hamburg."
Oh, sometimes gleams upon our sight,
Through present wrong, the eternal right;
And step by step, since time began,
"We see the steady gain of man.
That all of good the past hath had
Remains to make our own time glad,
Our common, daily life divine,
And every land a Palestine.
Through the harsh noises of our day
A low, sweet prelude finds its way;
Through clouds of doubt and creeds of
fear
A light is breaking calm and clear.
Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more
For olden time and holier shore;
God's love and blessing, then and there,
Are now, and here, and everywhere.
8.
Nearer, My God, to Thee,
sarah flower adams.
Tune—" Bethany."
Nearer, my God, to thee,
Nearer to thee,
E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be,
|| Nearer, my God, to thee, ||
Nearer to thee.
Though like a wanderer,
Daylight all gone,
Darkness be over me,
My rest a stone,
Yet in my dreams I'd be
|| Nearer, my God, to thee, ||
Nearer to thee.
There let the way appear
Steps unto heaven;
All that thou sendest me
In mercy given;
Angels to beckon me,
|| Nearer, my God, to thee, ||
Nearer to thee.
Or if on joyful wing
Cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon, and stars forgot,
Upward I fly, —
Still all my song shall be,
|| Nearer, my God, to thee, ||
Nearer to thee.
9.
God is Love.
BOWRING.
Tune — " Stockwell."
God is love; his mercy brightens
All the path in which we rove;
Bliss he wakes and love he lightens;
God is wisdom, God is love.
E'en the hour that darkest seemeth
Will his changeless goodness prove;
From the gloom his brightness streameth;
God is wisdom, God is love.
Programme .
21
He with earthly cares entwineth
Hope and comfort from above;-
Everywhere his glory shineth;
God is wisdom, God is love.
10. Home, Sweet Home.
'Mid pleasures and palaces, though we
may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place
like home.
A charm from tbe skies seems to hallow
us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne'er
met with elsewhere.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home !
There's no place like home, there's no
place like home.
An exile from home, splendor dazzles in
vain.
O ! give me my lowly thatched cottage
again.
The birds singing gaily that came at my
call,
Give me them, with the peace of mind,
dearer than all.
Home, home, sweet, sweet home !
There's no place like home, there's no
place like home.
11. Thou Grace Divine, Encircling
All.
eliza 8cudder.
Tune—" Ballerma."
Thou grace divine, encircling all,
A shoreless, soundless sea,
Wherein at last our souls must fall,
O love of God most free !
When over dizzy heights we go,
One soft hand blinds our eyes,
The other leads us safe and slow, —
O love of God most wise !
And though we turn us from thy face,
And wander wide and long,
Thou hold'st us still in thine embrace,
O love of God most strong !
The saddened heart, the restless soul,
The toil-worn frame and mind,
Alike confess thy sweet control,—
O love of God most kind !
And filled and quickened by thy breath
Our souls are strong and free
To rise o'er sin and fear and death
O love of God, to thee !
Monday, March 26.
(Opening.)
12. The Promised Land.
Tune—" Beulah Land."
Dedicated to the International Council of
Women.
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT.
Our weary years of wandering o'er,
We greet with joy this radiant shore;
The promised land of liberty,
The dawn of freedom's morn we see.
O promised land, we enter in,
With "Peace on earth, good-will to
men;"
The " Golden Age " now comes again,
As breaketh every bond and chain;
While every race and sect and clime
Shall equal share in this glad time.
Toilers in many fields have come
With sheaves for this our " Harvest
Home,"
While spirits true in every age
Have won for us this heritage.
O golden dawn, O promised day,
When error's lost in truth's clear ray,
When all shall know that God is love,
His kingdom here, around, above,
The world one equal brotherhood,
And evil overcome with good.
Then onward march in truth's crusade,
Earth's faltering ones implore our aid,
The children of our schools and State,
This coming of the mother's wait.
O doubting hearts ! O tempted ones !
The shadows fade, the sunshine comes;
Freedom for each is best for all,
The " Golden Rule " our bugle call;
And as to victory on we move,
The banner over us is Jove.
13. The True Fast.
james drumjiond.
Music—" Dennis."
" Is this a fast for me ?.'"
Thus saith the Lord our God;
"A day for man to vex his soul,
And feel affliction's rod?
"No; is not this alone
The sacred fast I choose,
Oppression's yoke to burst in twain,
The bands of guilt unloose ?
" To nakedness and want
Your food and raiment deai,
To dwell your kindred race among,
And all their sufferings heal ?
22
International Council of Women.
" Then like the morning ray
Shall spring your health and light;
Before you, righteousness shall shine,
Behind, my glory bright."
14. The Church Universal,
samuel longfellow.
Music— " Bowdoin Square."
One holy Church of God appears
Through every age and race,
Unwasted by the lapse of years,
Unchanged by changing place.
From oldest time, on farthest shores,
Beneath the pine or palm,
One unseen presence she adores,
With silence or with psalm.
Her priests are all God's faithful sons,
To serve the world raised up;
The pure in heart, her baptized ones,
Love her communion-cup.
The truth is her prophetic gift,
The soul her sacred page,
And feet on mercy's errands swift
Do make her pilgrimage.
O living Church, thine errand speed,
Fulfill thy task sublime,
With Bread of Life earth's hunger feed,
Redeem the evil time !
15.
Greeting.
samuel longfellow.
Music— "Missionary Chant."
O Life, that maketh all things new, —
The blooming earth, the thoughts of
men,
Our pilgrim feet, wet with thy dew,
In gladness hither turn again.
From hand to hand the greeting flows,
From eye to eye the signals run,
From heart to heart the bright hope
glows ;
The seekers of the light are one.
One in the freedom of the truth,
One in the joy of paths untrod,
One in the soul's perennial youth,
One in the larger thought of God.
The freer step, the fuller breath,
The wide horizon's grander view,
The sense of life that knows no death,
The Life that maketh all things new.
16.
Hark! The Sound of Myriad Voices.
harriet h. robinson.
Tune—" Hold the Fort."
Hark! the sound of myriad voices
Rising in their might;
'Tis the daughters of Columbia
Pleading for the right.
Chorus.
Raise the flag and plant the standard,
Wave the signal still;
Brothers, we must share your freedom;
Help us, and we will.
Think it not an idle murmur,
You who hear the cry;
'Tis a plea for human freedom,
Hallowed liberty! — Chorus.
O our country! glorious nation,
Greatest of them all ;
Give unto thy daughters justice,
Or thy pride will fall. — Chorus.
Great Republic! to thy watchword
Would'st thou faithful be.
All beneath thy starry banner
Must alike be free. — Chorus.
17.
New Columbia.
ANNA GARDNER.
Tune—" The Red, White, and Blue,"
O Columbia, gem of the ocean,
A home for the brave may you be;
A shrine for the people's devotion
Be the land of the just and the free!
Forget not the rights of your mothers,
When Liberty's form stands in view,
Or when proudly you carry her colors,
And boast of the red, white, and blue!
Chorus.
And boast of the red, white, and blue —
And boast of the red, white, and blue —
Or when proudly you carry her colors,
And boast of the red, white, and blue!
O Columbia, list to your daughters!
They rally from hilltop and plain,
And a prayer echoes over the waters
That justice and freedom shall reign.
When the banner of freedom floats o'er us,
And her sons to her teachings are true,
We will join in the soul-stirring chorus —
Three cheers for the red , white, and blue !
Chorus.
Three cheers for the red, white, and
blue —
Three cheers for the red, white, and
blue —
Then we'll join in the soul-stirring
chorus,
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue.
Reception.
23
18. The Equal-Rights Banner,
by kev. c. c. harrah.
Tune—" The Star-Spangled Banner."
Oh, say, have you heard of the new, dawn-
ing light,
Bringing hope to our land, and its foes all
surprising ?
Our banner still floats as the emblem of
right,
And the day breaks upon us, for women
are rising.
And with ballots in hand, at the right's
dear command,
They'll be true to the flag and will rescue
our land;
And ever the Equal -Rights Banner
shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of
the brave.
The women for truth and for virtue will
stand,
And the country be freed from unjust
legislation,
And Heaven then will smile on a purified
land,
And the Power shall be praised that hath
kept us a nation.
Woman's ballot is just, so then conquer
we must,
And this be our watchword — "In God is
Our Trust!"
And our Equal-Rights Banner in tri-
umph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of
the brave.
19. The New America.
elizabeth boynton harbert.
Tune— "America."
Our country, now from thee
Claim we our liberty,
In freedom's name.
Guarding home's altar fires,
Daughters of patriot sires,
Their zeal our own inspires
Justice to claim.
Women in every age
For this great heritage
Tribute have paid.
Our birth-right claim we now-
Longer refuse to bow;
On freedom' 8 altar now
Our hand is laid.
Sons, will you longer see
Mothers on bended knee
For justice pray ?
Rise, now in manhood's might,
With earth's great souls unite
To speed the dawning light
Of freedom's day.
On Saturday evening, March 24th, Mr. and Mrs. Spofford
gave a reception, at the Riggs House, to the officers and
delegates of the Council. The large dining-room, artistically
decorated with the flags of all countries and the States of the
Union, was thrown open, but it was soon so densely packed,
as were the parlors and halls also, that the slightest attempt
to change one's position was beset with difficulties.
Although the crowd continued from 9 o'clock until mid-
night, but few had an opportunity to exchange the civilities of
the occasion. However, the discomfort was gratifying. That
such numbers desired to pay their respects to the leaders of
so many reform movements showed a marked change in
public sentiment.
SUNDAY, MAECH 25, 1888.
2.30 P. M.
RELIGIOUS SERVICE.
Long before the hour of opening had arrived Albaugh's
Opera House was crowded and the aisles filled with persons
standing. Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford made the invocation and
read Samuel Longfellow's beautiful hymn of "Greeting."*
The audience joined in the singing. Rev. Ada C. Bowles read
the 26th chapter of Acts, which was followed by the singing
of " Nearer, My God, to Thee." Rev. Antoinette Brown Black-
well offered prayer, after which Rev. Annie H. Shaw delivered
the sermon.
Miss Shaw. The passage of Scripture to which we invite your attention this
afternoon will be found in the 26th chapter of Acts and the 19th verse :
"Whereupon, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision.*'
In the midst of the beauty of his Oriental home the psalmist caught the
vision of the events in the midst of which you and I are living to-day.
And though he wrought the vision into the wonderful prophecy of the
68th psalm, yet so new and strange were the thoughts to men, that for
thousands of years they failed to catch its spirit and understand its power.
The vision which appeared to David was a world lost in sin. He heard its
cry for deliverance, he saw its uplifted hands. Everywhere the eyes of good
men were turned toward the skies for help. For ages had they striven against
the forces of evil ; they had sought, by every device, to turn back the flood-
tide of base passion and avarice, but all to no purpose. It seemed as if all
men were engulfed in one common ruin. Patient, sphinx-like, sat woman,
limited by sin, limited by social custom, limited byfa'se theories, limited by
bigotry and by creeds, listening to the tramp of the weary millions as they
passed on through the centuries, patiently toiling and waiting, humbly bear-
ing the pain and weariness which seemed to fall to her lot. Century after
century came forth from the divine life but to pass into the great eternity;
and still she toiled and still she waited. At last, in the mute agony of de-
spair, she lifted her eyes above the earth to heaven and away from the jar-
ring strifes which surrounded her, and that which dawned upon her gaze was
so full of wonder that her soul burst its prison-house of bondage as she beheld
the vision of true womanhood. She knew it was not the purpose of the Divine
that she should crouch beneath the bonds of custom and ignorance. She
learned that she was created not from the side of man, but rather by the side
of man. The world had suffered that she had not kept her divinely-appointed
place. Then she remembered the words of prophecy, that salvation was to come
to the race not through the man, but through the descendant of the woman.
*Number 15, page 22.
Religious Service. 25
Recognizing her divinely-appointed mission, she cried out: " Speak now,
Lord, for thy servant heareth thee." And the answer came : " The Lord
giveth the Word, and the women that publish the tidings are a great host."
To-day the vision is a reality. From every land the voice of woman is
heard proclaiming the word which is given to her, and the wondering world,
which, for a moment stopped its busy wheel of life that it might smite and
jeer her, has at last learned that wherever the intuitions of the human mind -**"
are called into special exercise, wherever the art of persuasive eloquence is
demanded, wherever heroic conduct is based upon duty rather than im-
pulse, wherever her efforts in opening the sacred doors for the benefit of
truth can avail — in one and all of these respects woman greatly excels man,
and the wisest and best people everywhere feel that if woman enters upon her
tasks wielding her own effective armor, if her inspirations are pure and holy,
the Spirit Omnipotent, whose influence has held sway in all movements and
reforms, whose voice has called into its service the great workmen of
every age, shall, in these last days, fall especially upon woman, and if she
venture to obey, what is man that he should attempt to abrogate her
sacred and divine mission? And, in the presence of what woman has-^
already accomplished who shall say that a true woman — noble in humility,
strong in her gentleness, rising above all selfishness, gathering up the varied
gifts and accomplishments to consecrate them to God and humanity — who
shall say that such an one is not in a position to do that for which the world
will no longer rank her other than among the first in the work of human
redemption? Then, influenced by lofty motives, stimulated by the wail of
humanity and the glory of God, woman may go forth and enter into any
field of usefulness that opens up before her.
Yet there are those who still contend that men only are able to reason out the **
problems of life. We to-day do not grant this. But were it true, there are other
avenues to trnth than that which lies through the uncertain by-ways of reason.
To assume that it were not so is to know why heads and not hearts were made^-
Some of the deepest, profoundest truths that have ever come to the knowl-
edge of the race were felt, not reasoned out. " The world by wisdom, knew
not God." The Divine Master and Son of God taught that a pure heart
and upright life would quicken the intellect — not " Become learned and you
shall know," but " Obey and you shall understand." Up through the uni-
verse the Lord himself has cast a highway by which we may arrive at spirit-'
ual and human freedom ; not by knowledge, but by truth, and the deepest
insights of truth are given, not by the intellect, but by love.
Who, then, but the mother-heart of the race shall be able to read to its deep-
est depths the mystery? She shall be able to unearth its profoundest secrets.
In the Scrip'ure from which the text is taken we recognize a universal law
which has been the experience of every one of us. Paul is telling the story
of a vision he saw, which became the inspiration of his life, the turning
point where his whole life was changed, when, in obedience to that vision,
3
26 International Council of Women.
he put himself in relation to the power to which he belonged, and, recogniz-
ing in that One which appeared to him on his way from Jerusalem to Damas-
cus his Divine Master, he also recognized that the purpose of his life could
be fulfilled only when, in obedience to that Master, he caught and assimilated
to himself the nature of Him whose servant he was.
He had been recounting the story of this vision to the king and his court.
He recalled how he had gone as a persecutor from Jerusalem to Damascus,
and how he had had manifested to him on his way the vision which changed
the whole tone of his life. A Voice, claiming him as His disciple, spoke
unto his soul, and spoke the word which turned him from his old prejudices and
purposes into a new channel and a new life. He who had been Saul of
Tarsus, the persecutor of the disciples of the Lord, became Paul, the pris-
oner of the Lord Jesus Christ. Permit me to use this vision, which is so
familiar to us all, as a type of that which must appear to every one of us
who is able to do anything for God and humanity.
Every reformer the world has ever seen has had a similar experience.
Every truth which has been taught to humanity has passed through a like
channel. No one of God's children has ever gone forth to the world who
has not first had revealed to him his mission in a vision.
To this Jew, bound by the prejudices of past generations, weighed down
by the bigotry of human creeds, educated in the schools of an effete philos-
ophy, struggling through the darkness and gloom which surrounded him,
when as a persecutor he sought to annihilate the disciples of a new faith,
there came this vision into his life, there dawned the electric light of a
great truth, which, found beneath the hatred and pride and passion which
filled his life and heart, the divine germ which is implanted in the soul of
each one of God's children. The divine within the man recognized the
light and voice of the Divine, and answered to the voice which spoke from
without : " Speak, Lord, who art Thou?" and the Truth spoke unto him,
" I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest."
Then came crowding through his mind new queries : " Can it be that my
fathers were wrong, and that their philosophy and religion does not contain
all there is of truth ? Can it be that outside of all we have known there lies a
great unexplored universe of truth to which the mind of man can yet attain ? "
And, filled with the divine purpose, he opened his heart to receive the new
truth which came to him from the vision which God revealed to his soul.
All down through the centuries God has been revealing in visions the
great truths which have lifted the race step by step, until to-day womanhood,
in this sunset hour of the nineteenth century, is gathered here from the East
and the West, the North and the South, women of every land, of every race,
of all religious beliefs. But diverse and varied as are our races, diverse
and varied as are our theories, diverse as are our religious beliefs, yet we come
together here with one harmonious purpose — that of lifting humanity into a
higher, purer, truer life.
Religious Service. 27
To one has come the vision of political freedom. She saw how the avarice
and ambition of one class with power made them forget the rights of another.
She saw how the unjust laws embittered both — those who made them and those
upon whom the injustice rested. She recognized the great principles of uni-
versal equality, seeing that all alike must be free ; that humanity everywhere
must be lifted out of subjection into the free and full air of divine liberty.
To another was revealed the vision of social freedom. She saw that sin
which crushed the lives of one class rested lightly on the lives of the other.
She saw its blighting effect on both, and she lifted up her voice and de-
manded that there be recognized no sex in sin. Another has come hither,
who, gazing about her, saw men brutalized by the rum fiend, the very life of
a nation threatened, and the power of the liquor traffic, with its hand on the
helm of state, guiding her, with sails full spread, straight upon the rocks to
destruction. Then, looking away from earth, she beheld s* vision of what the
race and our nation might become with all its possibility of wealth, with its
possibility of power, if freed from this, and forth upon her mission of deliv-
erance she sped her way.
Another beheld a vision of what it is to be learned, to explore the great
fields of knowledge the Infinite has spread out before the world. And this
vision has driven her out from the seclusion of her own quiet life that she
might give this great truth to womanhood everywhere.
By the shores of the Ganges sat a young woman upon whom had dawned
a vision of deliverance — deliverance to thousands of her own kind — and,
breaking away from the customs of centuries, she is revealing to the world
the vision that dawned upon her there of what India might become when her
child widows were free to carry the gospel of liberty to her secluded millions.
And so we come, each bearing her torch of living truth, casting over the
world the light of the vision that dawned upon her own soul.
But there is still another vision which reaches above earth, beyond time —
a vision which has dawned upon many that they are here not to do their
own work, but the will of Him who sent them. And the woman who rec-*^
ognizes the still higher truth recognizes the great power to which she belongs
and what her life may become when, in submission to that Master, she takes^
upon herself the nature of Him whom she serves. We will notice in the
second place the purpose of all these visions which have come to us.
Paul was not permitted to dwell on the vision of truth which came to
him. God had a purpose in its manifestation, and that purpose is revealed
when God said to the wonder-stricken servant, "Arise! for I have ap-
peared unto thee for this purpose, not that thou behold the truth for thy-
self, but to make thee a minister and a witness both of that which thou hast
already seen and of other truths which I shall reveal unto thee. Go unto
the Gentiles. Give them the truth which thou shalt receive that their eyes
may be opened, and that they may be turned from darkness to light; that
they, too, may receive a like inheritance with thyself."
28 International Council of Women.
Not that they to whom the vision comes may study its effect upon men,
if it were revealed to them, not that they may speculate upon the expedi-
ency of its practical operation over human lives, not that God lets those to
whom he reveals the truth decide as to whether the rest shall receive it or
not, not that they are to be the favored repositories into which the Divine
shall pour His sacred secrets; but that they to whom the truth is revealed
may carry it to a waiting race. This, then, is God's lesson to you and to me.
He opens before our eyes the vision of a great truth, and for a moment
He permits our wondering gaze to rest upon it; then he bids us go forth.
Jacob of old saw the vision of God's messengers going forth up and down
the world, up and down the mount of visions, ascending and descending,
but none of them were standing still.
Herein, then, lies the secret of the success of the reformer. First the vision,
then the purpose of the vision. " I was not disobedient unto the heavenly
vision." This is the manly and noble confession of one of the world's
greatest reformers, and in it we catch a glimpse of the secrets of the success
of his divinely-appointed mission. The difference between tlje Saul of Tar-
sus and Paul the Prisoner of the Lord was measured by his obedience. This,
too, is a universal law, true of the life of every reformer, who, having had
revealed to him a vision of the great truth, has in obedience to that vision
carried it to humanity. Though at first he holds the truth to himself, and
longs to be lifted up by its power, he soon learns that there is a giving forth
of that which one possesses which enriches the giver, and, that the more
he gives of his vision to men the richer it becomes, the brighter it grows,
until it illuminates all his pathway. This was the experience of Paul, and
though we saw him this afternoon in our Scripture lesson on trial for his life,
yet his words are those of a conqueror, and ring forth with such a triumphant
tone as for a moment makes us forget that they are the utterance of a pris-
oner, and not of one who has become a conqueror over all his foes.
Yet his life was not an idle dream ; it was a constant struggle against the
very people whom he tried to save ; his greatest foes were those to whom he
was sent. He had learned the lesson all reformers must sooner or later learn;
that the world never welcomes its deliverers save with the dungeon, the fagot,
or the cross. No man or woman has ever sought to lead his fellows to a
higher and better mode of life without learning the power of the world's
ingratitude ; and though at times popularity may follow in the wake of a
reformer, yet the reformer knows popularity is not love. The world will
support you when you have compelled it to do so by manifestations of power,
but it will shrink from you as soon as power and greatness are no longer on
your side. This is the penalty paid by good people who sacrifice themselves
for others. They must live without sympathy ; their feelings will be misun-
derstood; their efforts will be uncomprehended. Like Paul, they will be
betrayed by friends; like Christ in the agony of Gethsemane, they must bear
their struggle alone.
Religious Service. 29
Our reverence for the reformers of the past is posterity's judgment of
them. But to them, what is that now? They have passed into the shadows
where neither our voice of praise or blame disturbs their repose.
This is the hardest lesson the reformer has to learn. When, with soul
aglow with the light of a great truth, she, in obedience to the vision, turns
to take it to the needy one, and, instead of finding a world ready to rise
up and receive her, she finds it wrapped in the swaddling clothes of
error, eagerly seeking to win others to its conditions of slavery. She longs
to make humanity free; she listens to their conflicting creeds, and longs to
save them from the misery they endure. She knows that there is no form
of slavery more bitter or arrogant than error, that truth, alone, can make
man free, and she longs to bring the heart of the world and the heart of truth
together that the truth may exercise its transforming power over the life of
the world. The greatest test of the reformer's courage comes when, with
a warm, earnest longing for humanity, she breaks for it the bread of truth
and the world turns from this life-giving power and asks, instead of bread,
a stone.
It is just here that so many of God's workmen fail and themselves need
to turn back to the vision as it has appeared to them, and to gather fresh
courage and new inspiration for the future. This, my sisters, we all must
do if we would succeed. The reformer may be inconsistent, she may be stern
or even impatient, but if the world feels that she is in earnest she can not
fail. Let the truth which she desires to teach first take possession of her-
self. Every woman who to-day goes out into the world with a truth, who
has not herself become possessed of that truth, had better stay at home.
Who would have dreamed, when at that great meeting in London some
years ago the arrogance and pride of men excluded from its body the women
whom God had moved to lift up their voices in behalf of the baby that was
sold by the pound, who would have dreamed that that very exclusion would
be the key-note of woman's freedom ? That out of the prejudice of that hour
God should be able to flash upon the crushed hearts of those excluded the
grand vision which we see manifested here to-day? That out of a longing
for the liberty of a portion of the race, God should be able to show to women
the still larger, grander vision of the freedom of all human kind ?
Grand as is this vision which meets us here, it is but the dawning of a
new day ; and as the first beams of morning light give promise of the
radiance which shall envelop the earth when the sun shall have arisen in all
its splendor, so there comes to us a prophecy of that glorious day when the
vision which we are now beholding, which is beaming in the soul of one,
shall enter the hearts and transfigure the lives of all. * * *
During the collection the audience joined in singing "God
is Love" and " Is this a Fast for me," after which the bene-
diction was pronounced by Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.
30 International Council of Women.
FORMAL OPENING OF THE COUNCIL.
Monday, March 25, 10 A. M.
Victor Hugo's prophecy, "that the nineteenth century
belongs to woman," seemed fulfilled as one gazed upon the
scene presented at Albaugh's Opera House this morning.
Under the shadow of the Capitol, made historic by the fiery
eloquence of a long line of American patriots, who have led
the advance-guard of the world's onward march to liberty,
were assembled an immense audience of equally patriotic
women from every part of the United States, whose faithful
services to their country, alike in peace and war, have entitled
them to recognition as citizens of a republic in the parliaments
of the world.
The vast auditorium, perfect in its proportions and arrange-
ments, was richly decorated with the flags of all nations and
of every State in the Union. The platform was fragrant with
evergreens and flowers, brilliant with rich furniture, crowded
with distinguished women, while soft music, with its universal
language, attuned all hearts to harmony. The beautiful por-
trait of the sainted Lucretia Mott, surrounded with smilax
and lilies of the valley, seemed to sanctify the whole scene
and to give a touch of pathos to all the proceedings.
The hour was impressive and significant as representative
women gathered on the platform from England, Scotland, Ire-
land, France, Denmark, Norway, Finland, India, Canada, and
every part of the United States, all honored guests of the
National Woman Suffrage Association.
In calling the meeting to order, Miss Anthony remarked :
As you have noticed in the call and in the various announcements for this
Council, the specific purpose in calling it during this year and in this coun-
try was because of the fact that the first convention ever held in the world,
by women, occurred just forty years ago. The meeting will be opened with
prayer by Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who was the first woman ever
ordained as a minister in this nation, and, I think, in any nation on the
globe.
After the invocation by Mrs. Blackwell, Elizabeth Boynton
Formal Opening of the Council. 31
Harbert read the hymn which she had written for the occasion,
<* The Promised Land." Addressing the audience, she said :
Will you join with us, carrying with the reading your thought, in order
that you may unite in singing the twelfth hymn, entitled "The Promised
Land," into which we shall enter with this our Moses and our Joshua (re-
ferring to Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony) this significant morning.
The entire audience joined in the singing of the hymn.
Miss Anthony : The notice issued forty years ago for that first convention,
if I remember rightly, did not have any signatures attached, but, nevertheless,
the two moving spirits in originating the call and in carrying forward the
meeting were those of our sainted Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia, and Eliz-
abeth Cady Stanton, who is with us to-day. Without any particular words
that shall call to your mind the vast change in the world these last forty
years, I will ~ay that forty years ago women had no place anywhere except
in their homes, no pecuniary independence, no purpose in life save that
which came through marriage. From a condition, as many of you can re-
member, in which no woman thought of such a thing as earning her bread
by any other means than sewing, teaching, cooking, or factory work,
in these later years the way has been opened to every avenue of industry —
to every profession — whereby woman to-day stands almost the peer of
man in her advantages for pecuniary independence. What is true in the
world of work is true in education, is true everywhere.
Men have granted us, in the privileges and civil rights of society, which
we have been demanding, everything, almost, but the pivotal right, the
one that underlies all other rights, the right with which citizens of this
republic may protect themselves.
I have the pleasure of introducing to you this morning the woman who
not only joined with Mrs. Mott in calling the first convention, but who for
the last twenty years nearly has been President of the National Woman Suf-
frage Association — Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
With enthusiastic clapping of hands and waving of hand-
kerchiefs, the audience arose to honor Mrs. Stanton.
ADDRESS OF WELCOME.
Mrs. Stanton : We are assembled here to-day to celebrate the fortieth
anniversary of the first organized demand made by women for the right of
suffrage. The initiative steps were taken in my native State. In 1848 two
conventions were held in Central New York, and the same year the Mar-
ried Women's Property Bill passed the legislature. Other conventions were
soon called in Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and other States,
one after another, adopted- New York's advance legislation. This started
32 International Council of Women.
the greatest movement for human liberty recorded on the pages of history —
a demand for freedom to one-half the entire race ; the key-note struck in this
country in '48 has been echoed round the world. And to-day, to celebrate
our fortieth anniversary, we have representatives in person or by letter from
nearly every State in the Union, from Great Britain, France, Germany,
Finland, Italy, Sweden, India, Denmark, Norway, and Russia. It has been
our custom to mark the passing years by holding meetings of the suffrage
• societies on each decade, but for this we decided a broader recognition of all
the reform associations that have been the natural outgrowth of the suffrage
agitation in the Old World as well as the New.
In the great National and State conventions for education, temperance,
and religion, even thirty years ago, woman's voice was never heard. The
battles fought by the pioneers in the suffrage movement to secure a foothold
for woman on these platforms have been eloquently described many times
by Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Antoinette Brown, and I hope during
• this Council they will be rehearsed once more, for the benefit of those who,
while holding the vantage ground they secured, are afraid of the principles
. by which it was gained. The civil and political position of woman, when I
first understood its real significance, was enough to destroy all faith in the
vitality of republican principles. Half a century ago the women of America
were bond slaves, under the old common law of England. Their rights of
person and property were under the absolute control of fathers and husbands.
They were shut out of the schools and colleges, the trades and professions,
and all offices under government ; paid the most meager wages in the ordi-
nary industries of life, and denied everywhere the necessary opportunities for
f their best development. Worse still, women had no proper appreciation of
I themselves as factors in civilization. Believing self-denial a higher virtue
than self-development, they ignorantly made ladders of themselves by which
fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons reached their highest ambitions, creat-
ing an impassable gulf between them and those they loved that no magnetic
chords of affection or gratitude could span. Nothing was more common
forty years ago than to see the sons of a family educated, while the daughters
remained in ignorance ; husbands at ease in the higher circles, in which their
wives were unprepared to move. Like the foolish virgins in the parable,
* women everywhere in serving others forgot to keep their own lamps trimmed
and burning, and when the great feasts of life were spread, to them the doors
were shut.
Four years ago, at a reception in Liverpool, given to Miss Anthony and
myself, the question of an international convention was discussed, and so
favorably received that committees of correspondence were appointed to
ascertain what the general feeling might be. While the response from the
different countries was encouraging, the general feeling seemed to point to
America as the country to make the first experiment. Accordingly the
Formal Opening of the Council. 33
National Woman Suffrage Association assumed the responsibility of calling
this International Council.
Though we can not all share in the honors of the toil that has made this
grand gathering possible, we can share in the joy of welcoming to our shores
the noble women from foreign lands. We can benefit, too, in the broader
interests and more liberal opinions that association with the people of other
countries must necessarily bring to us.
"The world is my country and all mankind my countrymen " is a motto
that can not be echoed and re-echoed round the globe too often, to keep
our sympathies alive to the weal and woe of the human race. In welcoming
representatives from other lands here to-day, we do not feel that you are
strangers and foreigners, for the women of all nationalities, in the artificial
distinctions of sex, have a universal sense of injustice, that forms a common
bond of union between them.
Whether our feet are compressed in iron shoes, our faces hidden with veils
and masks, whether yoked with cows to draw the plow through its furrows,
or classed with idiots, lunatics, and criminals in the laws and constitutions
of the state, the principle is the same, for the humiliations of spirit are as
real as the visible badges of servitude. A difference in government, religion,
laws, and social customs makes but little change in the relative status of
woman to the self-constituted governing classes, so long as subordination in
all nations is the rule of her being. Through suffering we have learned the
open sesame to the hearts of each other. There is a language of universal
significance, more subtle than that used in the busy marts of trade, that
should be called the mother-tongue, by which with a sigh or a tear, a gesture,
a glance of the eye, we know the experiences of each other in the varied
forms of slavery. With the spirit forever in bondage, it is the same whether
housed in golden cages, with every want supplied, or wandering in the
dreary deserts of life friendless and forsaken. Now that our globe is girdled
with railroads, steamships, and electric wires, every pulsation of your hearts
is known to us. Long ago we heard the deep yearnings of your souls for
freedom responsive to our own. Mary Wolstonecraft, Mesdames de Stael
and Roland, George Sand, Frederica Bremer, Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Frances Wright, and George Eliot have pictured alike the wrongs of woman
in poetry and prose. Though divided by vast mountain ranges, boundless
oceans and plains, yet the psalms of our lives have been in the same strain,
too long, alas ' in the minor key j for hopes deferred have made the bravest
hearts sometimes despairing. But the same great over-soul has been our
hope and inspiration. The steps of progress already achieved in many
countries should encourage us to tune our harps anew to songs of victory.
It is with great satisfaction we also welcome here to-day representatives of
our own country-women from thirty-one different associations of moral and
philanthropic reforms.
34 International Council of Women.
Although all these are the natural outgrowths of the demands made and
the basic principles laid down by those who first claimed equal, civil, and
political rights for women, yet this is the first time we have met on the same
platform, to advocate the same measures in carrying on the varied reforms in
which we are mutually interested. I think most of us have come to feel that
a voice in the laws is indispensable to achieve success ; that these great moral
struggles for higher education, temperance, peace, the rights of labor, re-
ligious freedom, international arbitration, are all questions to be finally
adjusted by the action of government, and without a direct voice in legisla-
tion, woman's influence will be eventually lost.
Experience has fully proved, that sympathy as a civil agent is vague and
powerless until caught and chained in logical propositions and coined into
law. When every prayer and tear represents a ballot, the mothers of the race
will no longer weep in vain over the miseries of their children. The active
interest women are taking in all the great questions of the day is in strong
contrast with the apathy and indifference in which we found them half a cen-
tury ago, and the contrast in their condition between now and then is
equally marked. Those who inaugurated the movement for woman's enfran-
chisement, who for long years endured the merciless storm of ridicule and
persecution, mourned over by friends, ostracized in social life, scandalized
by enemies, denounced by the pulpit, scarified and caricatured by the press,
may well congratulate themselves on the marked change in public sentiment
that this magnificent gathering of educated women from both hemispheres so
triumphantly illustrates.
Now even married women enjoy, in a measure, their rights of person and
property. They can make contracts, sue and be sued, testify in courts of
justice, and with honor dissolve the marriage relation when it becomes intol-
erable. Now most of the colleges are open to girls, and they are rapidly
taking their places in all the profitable industries, and in many of the offices
under Government. They are in the professions, too, as lawyers, doctors,
editors, professors in colleges, and ministers in the pulpits. Their political
status is so far advanced that they enjoy all the rights of citizens in two
Territories, municipal suffrage in one State, and school suffrage in half the
States of the Union. Here is a good record of the work achieved in the
past half-century ; but we do not intend to rest our case until all our rights
are secured, and, noting the steps of progress in other countries, on which
their various representatives are here to report, we behold with satisfaction
everywhere a general uprising of women, demanding higher education and
an equal place in the industries of the world. Our gathering here to-day
is highly significant, in its promises of future combined action. When,
in the history of the world, was there ever before such an assemblage of able,
educated women, celebrated in so many varied walks of life, and feeling their
right and ability to discuss the vital questions of social life, religion, and
Formal Opening of the Council. 35
government? When we think of the vantage-ground woman holds to-day,
in spite of all the artificial obstacles she has surmounted, we are filled with
wonder as to what the future mother of the race will be when free to seek
her complete development.
Thus tar women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and con-
stitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of mas-
culine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just gov-
ernment, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming. Then, and
not till then, will the golden age of peace and prosperity be ours. This
gathering is significant, too, in being held in the greatest republic on which
the sun ever shone — a nation superior to every other on the globe in all that
goes to make up a free and mighty people — boundless territory, magnificent
scenery, mighty forests, lakes and rivers, and inexhaustible wealth in agri-
culture, manufactures, and mines — a country where the children of the
masses in our public schools have all the appliances of a complete education —
books, charts, maps, every advantage, not only in the rudimental but in
many of the higher branches, alike free at their disposal. In the Old World
the palace on the hill is the home of nobility ; here it is the public school or
university for the people, where the rich and the poor, side by side, take the
prizes for good manners and scholarship. Thus the value of real character
above all artificial distinctions — the great lesson of democracy — is early
learned by our children,
This is the country, too, where every man has a right to self-government,
to exercise his individual conscience and judgment on all matters of public
interest. Here we have no entangling alliances in church and slate, no
tithes to be paid, no livings to be sold, no bartering for places by digni-
taries among those who officiate at the altar, no religious test for those elected
to take part in government.
Here, under the very shadow of the Capitol of this great nation, whose
dome is crowned with the Goddess of Liberty, the women from many lands
have assembled at last to claim their rightful place, as equal factors, in the
great movements of the nineteenth century, so we bid our distinguished
guests welcome, thrice welcome, to our triumphant democracy. I hope they
will be able to stay long enough to take a bird's-eye view of our vast posses-
sions, to see what can be done in a moral as well as material point of view
in a government of the people. In the Old World they have governments
and people ; here we have a government of the people, by the people, for the
people — that is, we soon shall have when that important half, called women,
are enfranchised, and the laboring masses know how to use the power they
possess. And you will see here, for the first time in the history of nations,
a church without a pope, a state without a king, and a family without a
divinely ordained head, for our laws are rapidly making fathers and mothers
equal in the marriage relation. We call your attention, dear friends, to these
36 International Council of Women.
patent facts, not in a spirit of boasting, but that you may look critically into
the working of our republican institutions ; that when you return to the Old
.World you may help your fathers to solve many of the tangled problems to
which as yet they have found no answer. You can tell the Czar of Russia
and the Tories of England that self-government and "home rule " are safe
and possible, proved so by a nation of upward of 60,000,000 of people.
Since the inauguration of our movement most of our noble coadjutors,
men and women, have passed to the unknown land — Garrison, Phillips,
Channing, Rogers, Burleigh, Edward M. Davis, Lucretia Mott, Martha C.
Wright, Josephine Griffing, Clarina Nichols, Frances Gage, Paulina Davis,
Abby Foster, Lydia Maria Child, and Richard Mott, and many others,
together far outnumbering those who still remain to watch and wait. The
vacant places on every side warn us in the sunset of life that we, too, are
passing away, and that younger hands must soon take up our work. To
achieve equality for woman in every position in life, and fit her to maintain
that position with wisdom and dignity, is a work worthy to unite all our
energies and attune our hearts in harmony. Those who, like the children of
Israel, have been wandering in the wilderness of prejudice and ridicule for
forty years must feel a peculiar tenderness for the young women on whose
shoulders we are about to leave our burdens. Although we have opened a
pathway to the promised land, and cleared up much of the underbrush of
false sentiment, logic and rhetoric, intertwisted and intertwined with law
and custom, blocking all avenues in starting, yet there are still many obsta-
cles to be encountered before the rough journey is ended. I think, how-
ever, you will find in the bound volumes of "The Revolution" and "Woman's
Journal," and the three huge volumes of the " History of Woman Suffrage,"
all the necessary arguments to silence any reasonable opponent. If these
fail we shall hope much from the youngest-born of all our papers, "The
Woman's Tribune." If it finds that arguments fail, with the daring of youth
it may use some more powerful ammunition to drive all opposing forces from
the field of battle, and overthrow forever an aristocracy based on sex. The
younger women are starting with greater advantages over us. They have the
results of our experience ; they have had superior opportunities for educa-
tion, and will have a more enlightened public sentiment for discussion, and
more courage to take the rights that belong to them ; hence we may look to
them for speedy conquests.
In calling this Council we anticipated many desirable results. Aside from
the pleasure of mutual acquaintance in meeting face to face so many of our
own country-women, as well as those from foreign lands, we hoped to secure
thorough national and international organizations in all those reforms in
which we are mutually interested. To come together for a week and part,
with the same fragmentary societies and clubs, would be the defeat of one-
half the purpose of our gathering.
Formal Opening of the Council. 37
Above all things that women need to-day in their reform work is thorough
organization, and to this end we must cultivate some esprit de corps of sex,
a generous trust in each other. A difference of opinion on one question
must not prevent us from working unitedly in those on which we agree.
Above all things, let us hold our theological speculations of a future life in
abeyance to the practical work of the present existence, recognizing all sects
alike and all religions — Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant — to be
held equally sacred in their honest opinions. We sincerely hope that the
proceedings of this Council as a whole will be as successful and satisfactory
as our conventions in Washington invariably have been, and that marked
courtesy in public and private will be generously extended to all our guests.
We trust this interchange of sentiments and opinions may be a fresh inspira-
tion to us all in our future work, and that this Convention may be long
remembered as among the most pleasant and profitable days of our lives.
As the character of this Convention must depend in a large measure on what
those who call it may do and say, it would be well for us to keep in mind
the responsibility that rests on each and all. If it be true that we can judge
of the civilization of a nation by the status of its women, we may do much
during this Convention to elevate our institutions in the estimation of the
world.
Our form of government is being studied by leading statesmen in the Old
World, as never before; alike in the Chamber of Deputies and the House of
Commons the powers of our executive, legislative, and judicial departments
have been freely discussed and recommended as worthy of adoption.
Mr. Gladstone says: "The American Constitution is, as far as I can
see, the most wonderful work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of
man." * * *
Lord Salisbury says : " The Americans have a Senate. I wish we could
institute it here. Marvelous in its strength and efficiency. * * * Their
Supreme Court gives a stability to their institutions which, under the vague
and mysterious promises here, we look for in vain." Such writers and his-
torians as Sir Henry Maine, Mackenzie, Froude, and Matthew Arnold have
commented on our democratic institutions in most complimentary terms.
Indeed, the whole tone of English writers and travelers has entirely changed
since they amused the world with ridicule of our people fifty years ago. It
is the dignity of the Republic, as viewed to-day, we are here to represent.
Closer bonds of friendship between the women of different nations may help
to strengthen the idea of international arbitration in the settlement of all
differences, that thus the whole military system, now draining the very life-
blood and wealth of the people in the Old World, may "be completely over-
turned, and war, with its crimes and miseries, ended forever.
The question is continually asked, If women had the right of suffrage how
would they vote on national questions? I think I might venture to say that
the women on this platform would all be opposed to war. As to the much-
38 International Council of Women.
vexed question of the fisheries we would say, in view of our vast Atlantic and
Pacific coast, thousands of miles in extent, do let Canada have three miles of
the ocean if she wants it. If the cod is the bone of contention, as it is the
poorest of all fish, let the Canadians eat it in peace so long as we have oysters,
shad, bass and the delicate salmon from our Western lakes and California.
Upon other questions now up for consideration we should probably be of
one mind. As to a treaty with Russia to send back her political prisoners
to be tortured in her prisons and the mines of Siberia, our verdict would be
no, no. America must ever be the great university in which the lovers of
freedom may safely graduate with the highest honors, and under our flag find
peace and protection. The able statement by Stepniak, the Russian ni-
hilist, laid before our Senate, should be carefully read by all of us,
that our influence may be used intelligently against all treaties, com-
promising, as they would, the honor of a nation upholding the right
of free speech and free press in the criticism of their rulers by the people.
As to international copyright, we should no doubt say let us have a law
to that effect by all means, because it is fair and honest. Moreover, since
we now have our own historians, philosophers, scientists, poets, and novel-
ists, and England steals as much from us as we do from her, it is evident
that sound policy and common honesty lie in the same direction. As to the
overflowing Treasury that troubles the conscience of our good President, our
wisest women would undoubtedly say, pay the national debt and lighten the
taxes on the shoulders of the laboring masses. As to the amendments of the
Constitution now asked for by some reformers, and a body of the clergy, to
recognize the Christian theology in the Constitution and introduce religious
tests into political parties and platforms in direct violation of Article VI, clause
3, of the National Constitution, I think the majority ih our woman suffrage
associations would be opposed to all such amendments, as they would destroy
the secular nature of our Government, so carefully guarded by our fathers
in laying the foundation of the Republic. This freedom from all ecclesias-
tical entanglements is one of the chief glories of our Government and one
of the chief elements of its success. We can not too carefully guard against
all attempts at a retrogressive policy in this direction. If there is one lesson
more plainly written than another on the institutions of the Old World it is
the danger of a union of church and state, of civil and canon law, of theo-
logical speculations in the practical affairs of government. If the majority
of women on the suffrage platform would vote thus wisely on five questions,
they may show equal wisdom on others that may come up for future legisla-
tion.
On questions of land, labor, prohibition, and protection there would, no
doubt, amongst us, be many differences of opinion, but I think we should
all agree that that system of political economy that secures the greatest bless-
ings to the greatest number must be the true one, and those laws which
guard most sacredly the interests of the many rather than the few, we should
Formal Opening of the Council. 39
vote for. When woman's voice is heard in Government our legislation
will become more humane, and judgments in our courts be tempered with
mercy. Surely the mothers who rocked the cradle of this Republic may
be safely trusted to sustain their sires and sons in all their best efforts to
establish in the New World a government in which the sound principles
of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence may be fully realized,
in which there shall be no privileged classes, but equal rights for all.
Under a government and religion recognizing in rational beings the rights
of conscience and judgment in matters pertaining to their own interests,
above all authority of church and state, it needs no argument to prove the
sacredness of individual rights, the dignity of individual responsibilities.
The solitude of every human soul, alike in our moments of exaltation and
humiliation, in our highest joys and deepest sorrows, into which no other
one can ever fully enter, proves our birthright to supreme self-sovereignty.
As in all the great emergencies of life, we must stand alone, and for final
judgment rely upon ourselves, we can not overestimate the necessity for
that liberty by which we attain our highest development and that knowledge
that fits us for self-reliance and self-protection.
Miss Anthony then presented letters and telegrams of
greeting :
I hold in my hand a letter from Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, of Edin-
burgh, the oldes*. sister of John and Jacob Bright, a woman with a spirit as
beautiful and a culture as noble as her brothers'.
Newington House, Edinburgh, March 8, 1888.
My Dear and Honored Friend, Susan B. Anthony :
It would have been a'great privilege to have been able to accept your gratifying
invitation to be present at your Congress. My pen is too weak to express all I feel
of sympathy with you, in the idea which stimulated you to inaugurate this grand
expression of the progress which has been made towards the emancipation of women
from the fetters which law and custom have woven around them the world over.
It would have been a beautiful closing to a long life, fraught with much blessing,
to have become personally acquainted with the large-hearted and gifted women, not
only of your own country, but from other lands, who will gather round you on this
great occasion. But it is no small pleasure to be one among the many thousands
who will be represented there from our nation, by the deputation which has been
appointed to go in their names.
There are two noble women in Edinburgh whom we would have liked to have
sent to your Council — Elizabeth Pease Nichol and Eliza Wigham. They worked
in your anti-slavery struggle at a time when even Wilberforce shrank from the idea
of women taking an equal part with men in that holy work, lest it might lead them
to seek for their own emancipation. I mention this to show what time and effort
have accomplished for women. When the prophetic spirit of so good a man as
Wilberforce dared hardly face such an unfolding of the principle of freedom, we
can understand how it was that Christ, in a much darker day, said to his disciples:
" I have many things to say unto you, but you can not bear them now."
We send to your Congress women amongst the most eloquent and gifted of our
40 International Council of Women.
workers. Mrs. Alice Scatcherd and Mrs. Ashton Dilke represent the latest and
greatest of our political associations, the outcome of our Women's Suffrage Socie-
ties, associations which possess the virtues and additional strength which youth and
growing intelligence give to the offspring of an honored parentage. Newcastle-
upon-Tyne sends Mrs. Ashton Dilke to represent their Women's Liberal League.
She has the double honor of accompanying your venerable and venerated President,
Mrs. Oady Stanton, in her voyage home from this country, who seems to us; as she
crosses from our land to yours, to be a holy link joining the two nations together.
Mrs. Scatcherd' s work and ability are best attested by the many credentials she
brings over as the representative of the Women's Liberal Leagues, not only for her
own great county of York, but for Darlington in the county of Durham, Southport
in Lancashire, and Crewe in Cheshire. She also represents the women in her native
town of Leeds on the great and burning question of social purity. There is no ques-
tion from the lowest condition to which woman can fall to the highest to which she
can aspire educationally which has not had the benefit of her earnest voice and the
assistance of her wonderful power for practical work.
Mrs. Stewart, full of years and noble work in the great moral question of this age,
of which Mrs. Josephine Butler is the leading spirit, is sent by the Bristol committee
of the Ladies' National Society for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice,
thus manifesting her earnestness in the cause to which she has devoted the best
years of her life. Mrs. Stewart crosses the ocean when she might well have claimed
the rest which her age demands.*
And now I come to Mrs. Ormiston Chant. We in Scotland have not inaugu-
rated Women's Liberal Leagues as they have done in England ; one reason being
that there is less need for them, as the Conservatives do not possess much political
strength in Scotland. Mrs. Chant, therefore, represents our Edinburgh and Glas-
gow National Women's Suffrage Society pure and simple, which is a strong and
united body. She is also sent as the representative of the Social Purity, Peace and
Vigilance Associations here, and also of the British Women's Temperance Associa-
tions botb in Scotland and England.
I believe in inspirations. The other day I was led to look into a little volume of
poetry called " Verona and Other Poems," written by this gifted lady, to find four
lines which had much impressed me a year ago, when her book was first published.
I had quite forgotten what the verse was, but was sure I should recognize it when I
came upon it. I was not a little struck to find it was a part of a poem entitled,
" England to America." It seemed to me as though the little poem had been writ-
ten almost prophetically when regarded in connection with our having appointed the
author as our delegate to your Congress. I got it printed in the form in which I
send it to you, with the dove bearing the olive branch, which comes as the emblem
of our feeling toward you. I thought it might serve as a little souvenir of your
great Congress, and Mrs. Chant will be the bearer of her own beautiful message
to you.
Before closing let me tell you another little story of love and good-will. Mrs.
Marie Muller, the mother of Henrietta Muller and of Eva McLaren, and of two
other daughters devoted to good work, in proof of her full appreciation of the far-
reaching meaning of your Convention, sent me £30 in aid of it, with these eloquent
words, " For God and my Country." And it is in the full meaning of these words
and with this great sentiment in our hearts that we send forth our representatives to
your Congress. When I think of all the questions and all the hopes and aspirations
* Mrs. Stewart failed to attend the Council.
Formal Opening of the Council. 41
which they go to represent, I feel that I may quote with a slight alteration the words
of one of our poets, and say :
They bear a freight,
It prayerful thought and mind were weight,
For Him who bore the world."
That they may contribute something of good from us to you and bring back
much from you to us, is the blessing which I hope an approving God will give to
their mission.
I am, dear Miss Anthony, apologizing for my long letter, your loving friend,
Priscilla Bright McLaren.
Miss Anthony. I hold in my hand letters from Elizabeth Pease Nichol,
Eliza Wigham, Edinburgh ; Mrs. Jacob Bright, Alderly Edge ; Catharine
Lucas Thomasson, Bolton ; Margaret E. Parker, Penketh ; Margaret Bright
Lucas, Caroline A. Biggs, Frances Lord, F. Henrietta Miiller, London;
Isabella M. Tod, Belfast ; Caroline de Barrau, Theodore Stanton, Charlotte
B. Wilbour, Paris; Eugenie Potonie Pierre, Vincennes, France. Mile.
Hubertine Auclert, editor of La Citoyenne, Paris, in a letter outlining her
idea of establishing parliaments of women, writes ;
When one wishes to assert one's* claim, one must, after all, have the courage to
proclaim it. * * * To gain our rights we do no violence to the body ; but
we do violence to the minds in which bitter prejudice is anchored. * * * "When
we shall have under our eyes assemblies of women discussing wisely, working a
great deal and well, we shall no longer be prevented from sending women into the
parliaments of men. * * * The Congress at Washington, in which so much
intelligence and nobility will be united, will complete, perfect and launch this idea
of which I have given but an outline. * * * The United States of America will
establish the united rights of the human race by causing to triumph, for the* two
sexes, equality before the law.
Miss Anthony. I would mention a few of the women whose names are
appended to this greeting from Bristol, England. There are three sisters-in-
law of John and Jacob Bright, Anna Priestman, Mary Priestman, and Mar-
garet A. Tanner, as noble women as the earth ever saw. There is Helen
Bright Clark, the daughter of John Bright. As some of you may know, Mr.
Bright, in his later years, has declared himself not in favor of the enfran-
chisement of women, and four years ago, when I was in England, I had the
pleasure of attending a Liberal Conference, at Leeds, in which he made a
great speech. In the business session of this conference this brave daughter
of John Bright, having been appointed by some of the Liberal Leagues of the
kingdom a delegate to that body, rose to her feet and seconded a motion
that the Liberal Party of England should put in its platform a woman -suffrage
plank, knowing well that it was in direct opposition to her father. That is
why I call her brave. As much as the woman loved her father, she loved
truth and her own convictions more. The Bright family I delighted to call
Americans when over in England, because they so thoroughly understood the
4
42 International Council of Women.
principles of freedom and equality that underlie our Government. The
Women's Liberal Association, of Bristol, sends us the following greeting:
Bkistol, England, March 1, 1888.
To the International Council of Women assembled by the National Woman Suffrage
Association of the United States at Washington, from the Committee of the Bristol
Women's Liberal Association.
Dear Sisters: We have heard of your intended gathering with deep interest.
We are not able to send one of our number to represent us, but we write to tell
you that your zealous labors in America strengthen and encourage our work here,
to bid you God-speed, and to assure you that we are one with you in the conviction
that women must stand by women, the most educated by the most ignorant, the most
sheltered by the most unprotected, until every barrier raised by law and custom in
ithe way of woman's full development and freedom shall be broken down.
(Signed on behalf of the Association.)
Anna M. Priestman, Helena Born,
President. Rosalie Bruce,
Helen P. Bright Clark, Maria Colby,
Margaret A. Tanner, Mary A. Estlin,
Emma Venaing, Louisa Perry,
Sarah Mary Jewett, Rebecca Newell Price,
Annie Thomas, • Mary Ralph,
Vice-Presidents. Catherine Stone,
Mary Priestman, Emily Sturge,
Treasurer. Helen M. Sturge,
Alice Grenfell, Louise Bjn-arm,
Sarah Jane Tanner, Executive Committee.
Honorable Secretaries.
Miss Anthony. And here is a greeting from Ireland with most honored
names of the city of Dublin :
To the International Council of Women to be held in Washington, March, 1888.
We, who subscribe our names, on behalf of very many friends in Ireland, desire
to express our deep regret that we shall not be able to assist in your eventful anni-
versary celebration. We shall, however, be with you earnestly in spirit. In com-
mon with yourselves, Irishwomen still suffer grievously from numerous political
and other disabilities, but we are thankful to report that we have made several
most important advances, chiefly in the direction of educational justice, during the
last decade; and we have good reason to expect that many other reforms of a like
substantial character will be effected during the next few years. That your delib-
erations may be blessed in the rapid hastening of those further measures of justice
for which women everywhere are longing, is the earnest prayer of our hearts.
Anna Maria Haslam, Hon. Sec. Women's Suffrage Association.]
Mary Edmundson, Hon. Sec. Dublin Prison- Gate Mission.
Hannah Maria Wigham, Pres. Women's Temperance Association, Dublin, and Mem-
ber of Peace Committee.
Wilhelmina Webb, Member of Ladies' Sanitary Committee, Women's Suffrage, etc.
Rose McDowell, Hon. Secretary Women's Suffrage Committee.
Isabella Mulvany, Head Mistress Alexandra School, Dublin.
Harriet W. Russell, Member of Women's Temperance Association.
Formal Opening of the Council. 43
Deborah Webb, Late Hon. Sec. Ladies' Dublin C. D. A. Repeal Association.
Ellen Allen, Member of Women's Temperance and Peace Associations.
Lucy Smithson, Member of the Sanitary Committee and Women's Suffrage Associa-
tion.
Emily Webb, Member of Women's Suffrage Association.
Agnes Mason, Medical Student and Member of the Women's Suffrage Committee.
Miss Anthony. And now comes Norway's greeting :
The Women's Suffrage Association of Norway to the International Council of Women
at Washington.
The members of our Association express their deepest gratitude to the women of
America who forty years ago took the lead in the woman suffrage movement. We
feel the greatest admiration for the noble work you have done and are doing in our
common cause, and we join in your hope for the future.
On behalf of the Women's Suffrage Association of Norway.
Gina Krog, President.
Anna Bogstad, Vice-President.
Miss Anthony. And re-enforcing this hearty good speed, there comes
this morning a cable message saying, " Success to your work," dated Chris-
tiana, March 25, 1888, and signed Norwegian Women's Suffrage Associa-
tion. And here is a cablegram from the youngest daughter of Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, who, to my chagrin, married an Englishman and expatriated
herself — Harriot Stanton Blatch, Basingstoke, who sends greetings and good
wishes to the Council, and who expected to be here until the last moment.
This telegram is from California, and says :
We, the undersigned, physicians of San Francisco, send greetings and best wishes
for a successful Council.
Charlotte B. Brown, M. D. Agnes Lowry, M. D.
Ltjcy M. F. Wanzer, M. D. Emma S. Merritt, M. D.
Edna II. Field, M. D. Elizabeth Yates, M. D.
Isabella Lowry, M. D. Elizabeth Gallimore, M. D.
Elizabeth C. Sargent, M. D.
Miss Anthony. I must tell you that Elizabeth Sargent is the daughter of
the late Senator Sargent, Minister to Germany, who perfected her med-
ical studies in the Old World, is now practicing in San Francisco, and has
founded a hospital there for women.
This is a telegram from the editor and founder of the New York Press,
Robert P. Porter :
Mrs. Porter and myself send greetings. Hope your Convention will be a success.
The Press will publish a good report of your proceedings.
Miss Anthony. Very good. We are glad that newspaper editors are
vieing with each other as to which shall publish the best report of our
Council. It used to be otherwise, when they vied with each other to see
which could say the least of fact and the most of caricature and ridicule.
Thank Heaven, those days have passed.
44 International Council of Women.
Miss Anthony then presented the foreign delegates.
Alexandra Gripenberg. I have the honor and the pleasure to represent
my poor little nation that lives in the hard climate which we have in Fin-
land, and I bring you a greeting from our pleasant blue lakes and our mid-
night sun, and from our women who have sent me here to the land of the
noble and eminent women of America.
Isabelle Bogelot (speaking in her native tongue). I am here in the
name of my compatriots of France to bear to you the message of her greet-
ing and her thanks.
Miss Anthony then presented the delegate from Norway,
Sophia Magelsson Groth.
Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati. I am very glad, good friends, to meet you
here, and I am sure if India knew what these wonderful women were doing
she would be very glad to send her greeting; and as she has not sent her
official delegates, I will try to represent her myself, especially as her women
are not able to talk in your language. I am very glad to meet you, and wish
you all success.
Margaret Moore. When at the reception the other evening some
friendly woman said to me: "I hope you will feel at home in this country,"
I said: "Yes, every Irish woman who comes to America comes home."
And so far do I feel that, that although to-day I stand here as a representa-
tive of Irish women, as you have been told, having received the highest
honor in the power of the English government to bestow upon an Irish
woman, that of imprisonment for the love of her country, I have declared
my intention of becoming an American citizen and bringing up my children
here in the land of liberty. We Irish women have already taken our place
in the political van. When our brothers were imprisoned we stepped for-
ward and carried on the work. Even in the ages long ago there was an
Irish queen who died fighting at the head of her army, which proves that in
those days there was perfect equality and that women were able to do their
share of fighting then, as well as of talking. I am proud to be here with
this assemblage of the daughters of various parts of the earth, all strangers,
perhaps, in blood, but all the children of one common Father, and all
striving how best they can do that Father's will.
In presenting the English delegates, Miss Anthony said:
Mrs. McLaren in her letter of greeting to this Council introduces and, as
I might say, lays her sacred hand upon the heads of the delegates who have
been appointed from Edinburgh. They are Mrs. Ormiston Chant and Mrs.
Scatcherd. Then, besides these two delegates, we have Mrs. Margaret Dilke —
I have taught her better since she has come to this country than to be Mrs.
James or John — Mrs. Margaret Dilke is our other delegate from England,
Formal Opening of the Council. 45
appointed by the Liberal league of Newcastle. I will introduce to you first
Mrs. Alice Scatcherd, who was a member of that liberal Conference at
Leeds, of which I have already spoken.
Mrs. Scatcherd. I can not express to you how deeply touched I
have been by the cordiality of the welcome with which the same of my
country and its delegates have been received by you. I regard the invitation
to be present at this International Council as the greatest honor ever
accorded to me. Indeed, it is the greatest honor which America could,
in my opinion, render to an English woman. I am proud indeed to think
that I was present at that reception in Liverpool, to which Mrs. Stanton
referred, when the question of this great Council was first mentioned.
We have come, hoping to learn much from the ladies of this country. I
have long been convinced that whatever step American women take in
advance brings the women of England a step farther. Some people pretend
to be afraid of what American women will do; I can only say : " Go on,
ladies," because when you go far in advance we shortly follow. We have
come to learn. We have also come to impart our views to you. I feel very
sure that one permanent result of this great Council will be to draw the
hearts of all women more closely together.
I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart for the kind things you
have said of my country and of me, and if I might mention one person it
would be Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, to whom Miss Anthony has referred.
The women of Great Britain owe as much to the women of the Bright family
as the men of Great Britain owe to the men of the Bright family. And the
women owe a noble debt of gratitude to Jacob Bright, who for so many years
has been the champion of woman's enfranchisement in the House of Com-
mons. Mrs. McLaren is with us this very moment in spirit. She sits at
home with her gray hair and her widowed head bowed down, but she is
with us this whole week in spirit. When I go back to the hotel I shall send
her a cable to tell her of the magnificent meeting of yesterday, and of the
hearty reception accorded her name and ours to-day.
Mrs. Chant. It is indeed a day to be remembered, a day that gives one
such glad hope for all that is coming in the future. Though we have heard
some things that remind us that the fetters are still around some of us, I think
those who say it have climbed the mountain of hope. We will not waste
time in looking at the past. We see the mountain yonder, and those who
have climbed have promised us that we shall climb too. It is a high honor
to me to stand before you to represent the old country, for, though our
mother is old and in some things very feeble, she has had a brave heart
through the centuries, and we think if she can produce so splendid a child
she must be worthy.
Mrs. Dilke. I also thank you most sincerely for the splendid reception and
all the kind things that have been said about us in this country from the very
46 International Council of Women.
mo:iient we set foot here. I, who am a member of the Women's Suffrage So-
ciety in London, and represent more especially the Women's Liberal Associa-
tions of England, and in particular of my native town of Newcastle, am ex-
tremely glad to have had the opportunity of joining hands with you on this
great occasion. I got my first inspiration on woman suffrage from my friend,
Mrs. Fawcett, and for years now I have done my utmost not only for women,
but to join the hands of the great democracies, whom I believe will do the
utmost for women as well as men. And it is the sympathy of the democracy
of England that I wish more especially to bring to this great country of
America.
Mrs. Gustafson. I had prepared in my mind very much such a
speech as the opening of Mrs. Dilke's, and as I do not exactly want to
repeat it, perhaps you will permit me somewhat facetiously to contradict it
and say : When we first set foot on this shore not a living being whom any
of us had ever seen was there to greet us, owing to your blizzard. On account
of that, no one knew our steamer had come in. I am very proud and grate-
ful to bring greeting to this country from the National Prohibition Society
of Great Britain, which strives first and foremost for woman suffrage as its
sole hope of success in that or any other social reform whatever. I wish to
express also my gratitude for the cordial hospitality extended to us every step
from our first unrecognized landing until this very moment.
Miss Anthony. We are just in receipt of a greeting from the Fatherland,
from Germany. It is sent through Dr. Zakrzewska, of Boston ; it is from
Johanna Frederica Wecker, of Frankfort. We are just as glad for this greet-
ing from Germany as we are for all the others. Now we will take a little
part of England, and of America, and call on Canada. Let me introduce
to you Mrs. Bessie Starr Keefer, the first woman who ever took the degree of
B. A. in that country.
Mrs. Keefer. I do not know exactly what I represent this morning. I
am not supposed to represent the Province or the Dominion, but from Mrs.
Stanton's speech I presume I represent the codfish, and I want to say that
the codfish of Canada wishes me to inform the American nation that it would
just as soon be eaten this side the line as the other ; it does not make a bit of
difference. I bring to you the warm greetings of the Women's Christian
Temperance Unions of Toronto, eleven in number. Opposite me here stands
Mrs. Mary McDonnell, the President of our Union of Toronto, to whom
we Canadian women largely owe the fact that our spinsters and widows
have a vote in municipal affairs.
Miss Anthony. I believe we have heard from the delegates and repre-
sentatives from the different countries, and now I want to give you a little
specimen of Yankeeism. I am proud to present to you Lucy Stone, and I
am glad you give her a right royal reception. [Great applause and waving
of handkerchiefs.]
Formal Opening of the Council. 47
Mrs. Stone. This call to present myself is entirely unexpected. My place
on the programme is among the pioneers. This greeting you give me is
cordial and touches me very much. I only hope that when the Pioneers'
Day comes I shall be ready to say what you may be pleased to hear. I am
glad to be here and that you are all here, and that both sides of the ocean
are agreed in one thing — in the demand for equal human rights.
Miss Anthony. I wanted to tell you when I introduced Mrs. Stone how
I became converted to woman suffrage. In those good old days when
pioneers lived I took the New York Weekly Tribune. I did not go to that
first Worcester convention and I was not at that first convention at Seneca
Falls. Do not make any mistakes about my being a pioneer. I am
quite a young person. But I did read the New York Tribune, and I was
converted by the report of the very first of those meetings. Among the
speeches was one by Lucy Stone, whom I then had never seen, in which she
said the married woman's epitaph was the "relict " of John Smith, or some
other man, who had owned her. I then made up my mind that I would be
the relict of no man.
I will call now on one of our young soldiers — we can not all of us be old.
I want to bring before you a woman who has an army of a million .at her back,
Miss Frances E. Willard, a modest woman, who can talk very little, so I
hope you will make great allowance for her.
Miss Willard. I think Susan brought me out to make me own up that
I got very much the same sort of training from Lucy Stone that she did ;
but, like Susan. I am very juvenile; I am not a pioneer; I am just one of
the new-comers that are learning from these older heads how to behave, and
I remember when I was dreadfully afraid of Susan and of Lucy, too But
now I love and honor these women, and I can not put into words my
sense of what it means to me to have the blessings of these women who have
made it possible for more timid ones like myself to come along and take our
places in the world's work. If they had not blazed the trees and pioneered
the way we should not have dared to come. If there is one single drop of
chivalric blood in woman's veins it ought to bring a tinge of pride to the face
when Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Julia
Ward Howe, and these grand women, our leaders and our foremothers, are
here for us to greet ; that they, who heard so much that was not pleasant,
may hear an occasional pleasant word while they are alive.
Miss Anthony. Will Mr. Douglass say a word or two ?
Frederick Douglass. I had no expectation of being called upon at this
hour to utter one word, and hence I am in the condition of the excellent lady
who addressed you a moment ago, Mrs. Lucy Stone. I am looking forward to
the day of the pioneers. Having had the pleasure and privilege of being pres-
ent on that memorable occasion, I shall be very glad to say something when
the time arrives, in respect to it. Now I can only say that I rejoice to see
48 International Council of Women.
this day. I congratulate myself first and you next, and this audience next,
and the friends of this movement, and I rejoice above all things to see Mrs.
Stanton in this chair to-day. I rejoice and give her joy that after this storm,
this tempestuous forty years of agitation, she lives to witness the spectacle
that she sees to-day.
Miss Anthony. Let me present to you Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.
Mrs. Howe. I must say, like two or three who have preceded me, that I
am entirely unprepared to open my lips here this morning. When you have
derided Miss Anthony's youth, what will you say to my white hair? When
you have approved of Miss Anthony's celibacy, what will you say to my oppo-
site record, because it was about the same time when she took that valorous
determination that she would not be anybody's relict that I took my place
by the side of a hero to try to keep pace with his noble walk. I have another
ditto to say — not only that I am unprepared to speak, but that, also, like
others who have spoken, I am the convert of Mrs. Lucy Stone. I remember
very vividly the woman suffrage meeting held in Boston, and to which I
went with a rebellious heart. I came out very docile, indeed, and have so
continued ever since.
Miss Anthony. I now introduce to you a lady who made her appear-
ance at a Woman Suffrage Convention the same time I did — Matilda Joslyn
Gage.
Mrs. Gage. Although, like Miss Anthony, I can not claim to be a pio-
neer, not having been in attendance at that first convention of 1848, yet, if
having a rebellious spirit against all the wrong and injustice that one sees is
being a pioneer, I have been one from my earliest childhood.
Miss Anthony. I see Miss Clara Barton in the audience. Will she not
speak a word to us ?
Clara Barton. I lack words to express my thoughts. My heart is too full.
I am so full of joy at this scene before me that I have no words to utter it.
It is a tribute to these noble women that they much deserve. I fear I was
not a pioneer; but my heart was there with them. I am glad and proud to
say it. I have followed many other ways, and if I had not been so occu-
pied I should have done more with them ; but I can only say, God bless
them this day.
Miss Anthony. I see Robert Purvis in the audience. Let us hear from the
one man who was willing to wait without a vote for twenty years, if need be,
that his wife and daughter might vote with him.
Mr. Purvis. I am very proud of the distinction of being here, undeserved,
I think, however, in view of the very small claims I can make of having
contributed to the popularity which this cause has attained. But I am very
proud to be regarded as one of the pioneers in this great and glorious move-
ment.
Formal Opening of the Council. 49
Miss Anthony. Let me now present to you Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick,
of New Orleans, who is unable to speak on account of her voice, she having
been almost commanded not to leave her own sunny South, at this time. I
hope we may hear from her later.
The Chairman then read the list of the Associations repre-
sented in the Council.
1. National Woman's Christian Temperance Union,
Frances E. Willard, Clara Cleghorne Hoffman, Susan H. Barney.
2. World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union,
Hannah Whitall Smith.
3. Toronto Woman's Christian Temperance Union,
Mary McDonell, Bessie Starr Keefer.
4. Edinburgh Temperance Association,
Laura Ormiston Chant.
5. British Women's Temperance Association,
Laura Ormiston Chant.
6. National Temperance Hospital and Medical College Association,
Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett.
7. Woman's Auxiliary Conference of the Unitarian Association,
Isabel C. Barrows.
8. Western Women's Unitarian Conference,
Victoria Richardson.
9. Women's Ministerial Conference,
Rev. Ada C. Bowles.
10. Woman's Free Baptist Association,
Marilla M. Hills, M. M. Brewster.
11. Christian Women's Board of Missions,
Kate B. Moore, Cordie B. Knowles. *
12. Woman's Centenary Association of Universalist Church,
M. M. Dean, Emily L. Sherwood.
13. Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic,
Laura McNeir.
14. Woman's Relief Corps of the G. A. R.,
E. Florence Barker.
15. American Red Cross Society,
Clara Barton.
16. French Woman's Union for the Care of the Wounded,
Isabelle Bogelot.
17. Work of the Liberated of St Lazare,
Isabelle Bogrelot.
18. Women's Primary Association (Utah),
Nettie Y. Snell.
19. Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association (Utah),
Luella L. Young.
20. Women's Relief Association (Utah),
Emily S. Richards.
21. Woman's National Indian Association,
Amelia S. Quinton.
22. American Woman Suffrage Association,
Lucy Stone, Mary A. Livermore, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell.
23. School Suffrage Association (Massachusetts),
Martha A. Everett.
24. Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage,
Alice Scatcherd, Laura Ormistcn Chant.
25. Glasgow Women's Suffrage Association,
Laura Ormiston Chant.
26. Woman Suffrage Society (France),
Isabelle Bogelot.
27. Norwegian Women's Suffrage Society,
Sophia Magelsson Groth.
28. Western Association of Collegiate Alumnus,
Louisa Reed Stowell.
29. Association for the Advancement of Women,
Julia Ward Howe, Mary F. Eastman.
30. Finnish Women's Union,
Alexandra Gripenberg.
50 International Council of Women.
31. Danish Woman's Association,
Ada M. Frederiksen.
32. Women's Educational, and Industrial Union (Boston),
Abby Morton Diaz.
33. Knights of Labor,
Leonora M. Barry.
34. The Grange,
Fraternal Delegate: Anna M. Worden.
35. 36, 37. Darlington, Yorkshire, and Southport Liberal Women's Associations
(England), Alice Scatcbeid.
38. Newcastle Women's Liberal Association (England),
Mrs. Ashton Dilke.
39. Moral Education Society (Boston),
Caroline M. S. Frazar.
40. New York Committee for Prevention of State Regulation of Vice,
Anna Kice Powell.
41. Edinburgh Branch of the Federation for Repeal of State Regulation of Vice»
Laura Ormiston Chant.
42. National Vigilance Association (England),
Laura Ormiston Chant.
43. Edinburgh Purity and Vigilance Association,
Laura Ormiston Chant.
44. Danish Women's Union for the Protection of Young Girls,
Ada M. Frederiksen.
45. Sorosis,
M. Louise Thomas, Jeunie C. Croly.
46. Sociologic Society of America,
Lita Barney Sayles.
47. Universal Peace Union,
Rev. Amanda Deyo.
48. Women's Peace and International Arbitration Society (England).
Laura Ormiston Chant.
49. Prohibition Movement of Great Britain,
Zadel B. Gustafson.
50. Woman's National Press Association.
Aurelia Hadley Mohl.
51. Woman's International Press Association,
Martha R. Field.
Miss Anthony. One of the great purposes of calling this Council has
been that it may result in an International Association that shall henceforth
hold itself in readiness to communicate with every possible organization in
every possible country on the face of the globe, that we may know that all
women who are struggling for freedom are shaking hands together the world
over. To carry out this idea for the co-operation of the women of all
nationalities, it was decided, at a meeting of the delegates held at the Riggs
House, Saturday afternoon, to appoint a committee of fifteen, to take into
consideration whether it was advisable to form a National and International
Council. I was appointed as the person to name the committee to attend
to that matter. I have done it to the best of my ability. It is hard work to
select fifteen from a galaxy of fifty splendid women, but I hope you will
approve my choice. They are: Frances E. Willard, Victoria M. Richard-
son, Rev. Ada C. Bowles, M. Louise Thomas, Clara Barton, Rachel G.
Foster, Mary F. Eastman, May Wright Sewall, Martha R. Field, Bessie
Starr Keefer, Alice Scatcherd, Laura Ormiston Chant, Isabella Bogelot,
Sophia Magelsson Groth, Alexandra Gripenberg.
The session closed with the singing of the stirring hymn,
"God Shall Lead Us On."
MONDAY, MAECH 26, 1888.
EVENING SESSION.
EDUCATION.
After music by the orchestra, the Chairman introduced Rev.
Annie H. Shaw, who opened the session with prayer. The
leading paper of the session was presented by May Wright
Sewall, Principal of the Girl's Classical School, Indianapolis,
Indiana.
HIGHER EDUCATION FOR WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES.
Mrs. Sewall. Mr. Garfield said that a hollow log with President Hopkins,
of Williams College, sitting on one end of it and himself sitting on the other,
would constitute a university. The truth in such a remark is easily compre-
hended by women, for by virtue of that truth many a woman became liberally
educated before any college registered women among its matriculates. Our
subject, however, does not concern itself with the liberal education which gifted
girls have incidentally received through close companionship with learned,
generous, and magnetic minds, or have surreptitiously gathered from the
cast-away text-books of collegian brothersand the libraries of scholarly fathers.
The subject restricts us to a consideration of the higher education, received
through its legitimate avenues, the college and the university. Thus lim-
ited, the theme naturally suggests a study of the facilities for advanced edu-
cation offered to the women of this country by its institutions. It is no
part of my purpose to condense into this half-hour the history of the efforts
made by the women of the United States to obtain these facilities, but
to recapitulate the gains of the last half-century; to ascertain the absolute
and the relative condition of education among us; and to indicate the work
which must be done before we can regard the position of education in our
country with complacency. The gains can be measured only when we
know what opportunities were enjoyed by women at the time when this study
properly begins; and these opportunities may be inferred from the demands
made by the advocates of education at that time.
The first public expression in England of the restiveness felt by women
under the existing methods of education was made by Mary Wollstonecraft
in 1789. In 1799 Hannah More's "Strictures on Female Education"
appeared; this was followed in 1809 by a stronger discussion of the same
subject under a weaker title, viz., "Ccelebs in Search of a Wife," by the same
author. In the same year (180;) Sydney Smith also vindicated the claim
of women to a more extensive education than that in vogue, and in 1819
Emma Willard wrote her "Plan of Female Education," embodied it in a
52 International Council of Women.
memorial to the legislature of the State of New York, and petitioned that
body for the endowment of a female seminary, thus making the first appeal
on record in this country for State aid in the higher education of women.
Mary Wollstonecraft uncompromisingly demanded that society should
provide for women opportunities for the highest education, but the tone
of all other early advocates of this cause seems to the ears of this genera-
tion moderate, timid, and apologetic.
For example, Mrs. Willard begs the members of the New York legislature
to dismiss from their minds the fear that she wishes them to take measures
for the production of "college-bred females," and she implies that the
vision suggested by the phrase is as obnoxious to her mind as it possibly can
be to theirs. Again, in speaking of the honors which are used to stimulate
students in colleges, she expresses the opinion that the diploma which each
receives at the end of the course is " admissible in a female seminary ; " but
that the appointments to perform certain parts in public exhibitions which
are given in college by the faculty as rewards for superior scholarship can
not with propriety be made in a seminary, since, as she naively adds, " public
speaking forms no part of female education."
Indeed it was not higher education in its present sense which pioneers in
this cause advocated. It was not higher education at all, but education for
which they pleaded, as was their need. It must be remembered that the
college had been equipped for young men before the school -house was
opened to their sisters. Harvard College was founded one hundred and
fifty-three years before the slightest provision for the education of girls was
made by Massachusetts.
The Boston public schools, founded in 1644, were for boys only until
1789, when girls were admitted to the " reading and writing schools " for
a part of the year. Primary schools for both sexes were opened in 181 8.
In 1828 girls were admitted to all grades below the High School. The Girls'
City Normal School was established in 1852. In 1855 this institution was
changed to the Girls' High and Normal School. In 1872 it was divided
into a Normal and a High School ; only ten years ago, in 1878, the Girls'
Latin High School was opened. I have indicated the growth of
public-school opportunities for girls in Boston, because that is the
oldest most cultivated city of an old State which has always stood pre-
eminent for liberal-mindedness. Turning from public to private effort, we
find that the seminary at Bethlehem, Pa., opened as a day school in 1749,
and as a boarding school in 1785, is generally supposed to be the earliest of
its kind in the United States, as it was for many years the best. The
Friends' school at Wilmington, Del., still in operation, was opened in 1748,
one year prior to the Bethlehem school. It is not known that girls were
admitted at its opening, but the Quaker theory of the equality of the sexes,
the present practice of the school, and the fact that its history mentions no
i> J> <fi If
Education. 53
change of policy in this respect perhaps justify the conjecture that the school
was co-educational in the beginning.
The oldest institutions authorized to confer degrees upon women are
Bradford Academy, Massachusetts, chartered in 1804, Maine Wesieyan Sem-
inary and Female College, and Troy Female Seminary, chartered in 1821,
and the Granville Female College, Ohio, in 1834.
Such are the feeble beginnings of what may be called the higher educa-
tion movement. Its genesis and growth may be thus indicated : the
Boarding School, the Female Seminary, the co-educational Academy, and
the Female College. The higher education of present generations is being
carried forward regularly through (1) Women's Colleges, (2) Co-educational
Colleges and Universities, and irregularly through (1) Clubs, (2) Lectures,
(3) Correspondence Societies, (4) University Examinations.
The Female Seminary at its best, as at Troy, N. Y., was a noble institu-
tion ; but there was hardly more difference between the Female Seminary and
the barrenness which preceded it than between the Woman's College and the
Seminary. The transition from the Seminary to the veritable College was not
easy. A student of the higher education of women in this country can
draw upon ample sources of information. No subject in the last fifty years
has been discussed with greater fullness. In its consideration of the claims
made by advanced women the public has exhibited no credulity. Every
step has been challenged. The literature of this subject is vast, including
biographies of individuals, histories of institutions, reports of formal inves-
tigating committees, and the voluntary testimony of pulpit, lecture-room,
and press. Clergymen of all grades, from curates and itinerant exhorters
to Bishops and Moderators of the General Assembly, physicians of all schools,
country schoolmasters and college presidents, journalists, scientists, and
moralists have discussed the religious, physiological, social, moral, and
domestic aspects of this problem, while statisticians, with growing diligence
and accuracy, have collected the facts.
The objections against the claims of the higher education are all
a priori, and fall naturally under three heads :
(a.) Those that arise from the limitations of woman's (supposed) nature.
(<£.) Those that proceed from the (supposed) direct effects upon men of
such education of women.
(c.) Those that arise from a consideration of the consequences to society
which would flow from the higher education of women.
Though supporters of all of the above objections still survive, they have
been slain so frequently with logic, and have been buried so deeply under
arguments and facts, that one may justly refer to them in the past tense.
(a.) Objectors of the first class whose first interest, it must be admitted,
seems to have been the happiness of women themselves, assumed the mental
incapacity and the physical fragility of women. They urged that it was
54 International Council of Women.
fruitless cruelty to encourage women to undertake an education which they
could not achieve, inasmuch as their failure would make their mental limi-
tations conspicuous, and thus add to their disappointment bitter mortifica-
tion. These opponents added that should exceptional women demonstrate
their possession of the mental scope and force required to do good college
work, their feeble bodies would sink under severe application to abstruse
subjects, and the result of such efforts would be (to quote the awful phrase
of one who signed himself "A Worshiper of Womanhood) " hospitals and
asylums filled with highly educate%d female wrecks." Going further, these
defenders of what was currently called " natural womanhood " asserted that
even should what they believed to be the exceptional prove to be the usual,
and should it be demonstrated that women had capacity to acquire and
strength to sustain the higher education, yet such acquirements would impair
feminine grace, dull feminine sensibilities and destroy domestic tastes, thereby
unfitting women for the conjugal and maternal relations in which Heaven had
appointed that they should find their chief happiness.
(<£.) The second class of objectors declared, or implied with little attempt
at disguise, that as woman was created for man, her education must be reg-
ulated with reference to its effect upon him. These, accepting all the fine
views of woman's nature entertained by the first class of objectors, argued
that the tenderness, affection, and chivalrous regard with which women had
inspired men had been the chief agencies in softening man's rough nature ;
that educated women would fail to inspire men with these sentiments ; that
the absence of such sentiments would seriously impair masculine character.
They urged that woman's dependence upon man had hitherto been one of
his chief incentives to activity ; that the educated woman would be a self-
sufficing not less than a self-sufficient creature, and that her independence
of man would cause him to relapse into barbarism. Indeed the first institu-
tion that asked authority to confer degrees upon women was refused on the
avowed grounds that should women wear titles and degrees it would cheapen
academic honors in the esteem of men and abate their intellectual enthusiasm.
(V.) The third class of objectors considered neither the happiness of women
nor the complacency of men as of primary importance, but saw in the higher
education of women a menace to the State as well as to the family and soci-
ety. These opponents of higher education were quick to discern its out-
come ; indeed, they saw it when advocates denied it, and so the London
Quarterly, in an article upon the education of women, long ago said :
But, whatever Mr. J. S. Mill may think, England is not prepared for either female
suffrage or a female Parliament; for women as poor-law guardians, attendants at
vestries, public lecturers, public speakers, doctors, lawyers, clergy, or even, to any
much greater extent than at present, as authors.
It will be tesn that the three classes of objectors sustain one another, and
that all of the objections cited rest upon the ultimate conviction that woman
Education. 55
was destined to a subordinate role in the drama of life. The student finds
aU early systems of education resting upon this conviction, and upon its
corollary, that boys must be trained to be useful and girls to be pleasing.
The application of this theory reveals a flaw in it, since in the every-day
world nothing pleases like usefulness, ^nd nothing is so universally displeas-
ing as incapacity. Those who pleaded the weakness of women as a reason
for barring them out of colleges and universities were equally illogical, since
education is the one substitute for physical strength accepted by the practi-
cal world — is, indeed, the only possession,which in that world can supple-
ment weakness and enable it to compete with strength. The false philosophy
which diminishingly continues to obstruct the efforts of women to secure for
their sex equal opportunities for the higher education has its origin in an
ignoble conception of the purpose of individual life quite regardless of sex.
In the early history of education young men were no more encouraged to
pursue college culture for the benefit it would be to themselves than young
women now are. The New England colleges were in the first instance con-
secrated to the training of clergymen and school-masters. There is, there-
fore, no occasion for surprise that they did not receive women. So long as
the college said : "I will make my alumni into clergymen and professors,"
society naturally reasoned : " The college is no place for our daughters since
they are to be neither pastors nor pedagogues." When the college said:
" My institution is as necessary for the lawyer and the physician as it is for
the priest and the professor," society was justified in the opinion that a cul-
ture whose avowed object was to prepare its possessors for certain definite
lines of professional service, was neither required by the members of a sex
excluded from these lines of service, nor adapted to them. It is interesting
to note that the Massachusetts legislature passed a law making women
legally eligible to be employed as teachers in 1789, the year that dates the
first demand for the higher education of women ; and one is not surprised to
find that the first institutions offering improved facilities to women were
dedicated to the almost sole purpose of producing missionaries and teachers.
In harmony with this purpose society demanded that women who aspired
to the higher education should, like men, meet the test of utility. The
pass- words of the practical world — "What can you do?" "What do you
wish to do?" "How do you propose to use your education?" — although
they reveal a very low conception of the best results of culture and imply
an utter ignorance of the highest reason for desiring it, have still been of
inestimable advantage to women. There are yet parents, who in reply to
the question, "Shall you send your daughters to college? " say, "Oh, no
indeed. My daughters will never have to do anything for a living. We
are quite able to support them," sometimes adding: " They will probably
marry early; we wish them to do so." Utterances of this character imply
that the higher education is valued primarily, perhaps solely, for the income
56 International Council of Women.
it will yield. It was this valuation of it which led society in the early
period of higher education to interpret the desire for it in women as a con-
fession of poverty. It is possible that if the statistics were ascertainable
they would show that a majority of the alumnae of the fourteen institutions
admitted to the Association of Collegiate Alumnae began their college course
with the idea of its possible pecuniary availability in mind. It is certain
that few women have gone far in the higher education, whatever their opin-
ions upon beginning its pursuit, without growing into the conviction that
usefulness adds a grace to the most graceful woman. So the practical spirit
with its fatiguing challenge, "What are you going to do?" has yielded
the double advantage, that because of it enlarged activities have resulted
from the higher education of women, and have also been an argument for
bestowing it upon them.
However, one of the surest measures of the growing favor enjoyed by the
higher education in this country is the increasing number of young women
registered annually in our colleges, with whom its availability as a means of
support, if it enter at all as a motive into their college career, can do so
to a very remote and inconsiderable degree. The a priori objections above
cited, all based on the subordinate position of women, were met by a priori
arguments based on the dignity and nobility of the human soul, but an
incredulous world cared more for the replies to its doubts which were
afforded by experience. The struggle between aspiring womanhood and
sceptical society has been fruitful of experiments. Out of this struggle our
present educational opportunities have grown. Dry as statistics generally
are considered, they are of interest when they assume the form of an inven-
tory of one's own possessions. Therefore I shall make no apology for pre-
senting a table which shows the condition of what the Bureau of Education
calls "The Superior Education of Women" in the United States in the
year 1886. The figures here presented would have seemed to Emma Willard
and the ambitious young women whom she attracted to Troy precious as
title deeds to the fairest estates of El Dorado, and as intangible as the sun-
tipped towers of vanishing air-castles.
Colleges for women only 266
Co-educational colleges 207
Other higher institutions admitting women :
Agricultural and mechanical 17
Scientific 3
Medical 36
Total 529
In all of the above institutions women were registered as follows:
In institutions for women only 27,143
Women in co-educational institutions 8,833
Total 35,976
Education. 57
All of these young women of 1886 were undoubtedly pursuing what, in
popular phrase, passes for higher education and were enjoying what, to the
women of 1800 or even to those of 1848, would have seemed liberal advan-
tages. But in trying to estimate justly our present educational conditions
we must not be overcome by figures. We must repress the elation which
may naturally follow the above results of " taking an inventory." And yet
the deductions demanded by fairness and the further abatements suggested
by prudence being made, enough will remain to occasion gratitude and to
justify hope.
Any close application of high college standards would materially alter the
above numbers. Only four of the 266 Women's Colleges and only eleven of
the 207 co-educational Colleges and Universities are admitted to the Asso-
ciation of Collegiate Alumnae (an organization whose standard is high).
Though other institutions are doubtless as worthy as those already included
in the Collegiate Alumna? Association, it is probably true that less than one-
half of the 529 nominal colleges are doing real college work.
Again, the degree to which the public recognizes woman's claim to the
higher education is not indicated by a mere statement of the opportunities
provided for the education of young women, but, side by side with these
must be considered the opportunities provided by the same community for
the higher education of its young men.
In 1886 there were open to young men :
Universities and Colleges 346
Schools of Science 90
Schools of Theology, 142
Schools of Law, 49
Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, and Pharmacy, 175
Total, 802
This total is to be compared with 529, the number of corresponding institutions for women.
Students were registered in these institutions as follows :
Colleges and Universities, 41,848
Schools of Science , 10,532
Schools of Theology 6,344
Schools of Law . 3,054
Schools of Medicine, etc., 16,407
Total, 78,185
This total is to be compared with 35,976, the number of young women enrolled in similar
institutions.
As the education received by women at Normal Schools is that training
which most closely corresponds with the professional training received in
special schools which generally are open to men only, it may be fair to
include Normal Schools in this computation, though it must be stated that
the best Normal School gives no equivalent for a college and that the educa-
tion received is inferior to that of the average school of medicine, law, or
5
58 International Council of Women.
theology. Normal schools are almost without exception co-educational, and
there were in this country, in 1886 :
Public Normal Schools, 117
Private Normal Schools 36
With students registered as follows :
Women in Public Normals, 22,185
Women in Private Normals, (about) 5,000
Total, (about) 27,185
Men in Public Normals, 9,616
Men in Private Normals, (about) 3,000
Total, . . , . . (about) 12,616
The returns from private normals are inexact. Comparing the above
figures we find that there are 65-f-per cent, as many higher institutions open
to women as to men ; that excluding normal students of both sexes from
our computation there are 46— j— percent, as many women as men in institutions
for superior instruction, and including normal students of both sexes, there
are 69— |— per cent, as many young women as young men in such institutions.
The relative number of institutions of learning open to both sexes, and the
relative number of both in these institutions, are neither the sole nor the
most reliable gauges of the relative interest felt by the public in their edu-
cation. Communities and States, like individuals, express their opinions in
their investments. The actual and relative investments in the means of
higher education for the two sexes, in 1886, stood thus:
Value of Grounds, Buildings and Apparatus of Colleges for Women, . $9,635,282
Productive Funds of Colleges for Women, 2,376,619
Income from Productive Funds, 136,801
Value of Grounds, Buildings and Apparatus of Colleges for Men, . $62,3 "6,638
Productive Funds of Colleges for Men, 57,782,303
Income from Productive Funds, 3,271,991
The disparity between the properties belonging to their respective institu-
tions is greater than that between the number of institutions belonging to
both sexes, and much greater than the disproportion between the numbers
of men and women who are registered as students in these institutions. I
repeat the ratios existing between institutions and between numbers of stu-
dents that the contrast between those ratios and the ratios of resources may
be more evident. There are 63-f- per cent, as many nominally higher institu-
tions for women as for men ; there are 46—}— per cent, as many young women
as young men receiving the nominally higher education ; but the value of
the buildings, grounds, and apparatus for women's institutions is but 15-f- per
cent, of the values of the corresponding properties of men's institutions;
the productive funds of women's institutions and the income from the pro-
ductive funds of women's colleges is but 4-f- per cent, of the income yielded
by the productive funds of the colleges and universities for men. In this
Education. 59
connection is another significant fact. According to the report of the Edu-
cational Bureau, there were in the year 1886 no State appropriations
made for the support of the higher institutions of learning for women, while
State appropriations amounting to $1,690,275 were in that year made for the
higher institutions of learning for men.
The following computations are not without interest, and will make the
charge of partial statement impossible. Including co-educational colleges,
the opportunities of women are 62 per cent, as valuable as those of men.
They share the benefit of 51 per cent, as great productive funds, and 53 per
cent, as large an income. Attention to the facts here presented should
silence the declarations which one frequently hears to the effect that oppor-
tunities for education are now as good and as abundant for women as for
men. Such declarations are not true, and gratitude for the present oppor-
tunities should not blind us to the inequalities which remain. The demand
for the highest educational opportunities does not necessarily imply the
demand for co-education, but the last tables given above show that in the
United States these demands are practically identical. Thus, 266 women's
colleges have property amounting to $9,635,282, while 207 co-educational
colleges have corresponding properties to the amount of $29,611,144, and
the 139 colleges to which men only are admitted, own corresponding
properties to the amount of $32,745,474.
Of the institutions which have assisted the higher education of women in
this country, Troy Seminarv (1821), Oberlin College (1833), Vassar Col-
lege (1865), Michigan University (1870), Smith College and Wellesley
College (1875), Harvard Annex (1879), anc* Bryn Mawr College (1885),
merit special mention, since each marks an epoch in the history of a move-
ment to which each made an essentially original contribution, and to whose
course each gave a distinct impulse. Troy Seminary, as has been stated,
made the first application for State aid. Mrs. Willard, in speaking of the
rejection of her application for such assistance, wrote : " Could I have died a
martyr in the cause (of female education) and thus have insured its success,
I should have blessed the fagot and hugged the stake." This is the spirit
which has animated many a woman whose service has contributed to our
opportunities. It is a spirit which should be remembered on this occasion
with reverent gratitude. Oberlin College was the first exponent of co-
education; Vassar was the first woman's college marking the differentiation
from "Female College." How novel its conception was is revealed in the
correspondence of its founder. When the idea of this college was germinat-
ing in the mind of Matthew Vassar, in 1858, he laid his plan before William
Chambers, the distinguished publisher and philanthropist of Edinburgh, and
solicited his advice. In his reply, after expressing his astonishment at Mr.
Vassar's plan, Mr. Chambers attempts to dissuade him from a design which,
he assures him, will result in ignominious failure, and urges him to apply the
60 International Council of Women.
money rather in founding a school for the blind, for the deaf and dumb, or
for the feeble-minded.
Michigan University was the first example of a strong, well-endowed, and
numerously-attended institution opening its doors to women on equal terms
with men, on the ground that any educational institution supported by the
State belongs equally to all of the children of that State. Special commit-
tees from many institutions in this country and from Europe and South
America, have been sent to inspect the workings of the novel system at Ann
Arbor, and its success has promoted the extension of co-education in the
United States, in France and in England. Smith stood for three ideas
new to colleges for women, viz: Greek as an entrance requirement; the
•entire absence of the preparatory department, which, as an attachment to
most women's colleges, has so seriously impaired college work proper; and
the cottage system of dormitories. Wellesley was the first Woman's College
to place itself under the exclusive administration of women ; the mere fact
that the President of this strong, prosperous institution was a woman has
heightened intellectual respect for women throughout our country. The
Annex made the highest opportunities for instruction for the first time access-
ible to women ; and, by making its entrance examinations identical with
those of Harvard University, it has made a standard for secondary instruc-
tion. Bryn Mawr, availing herself of all previous experiments, made a dis-
tinct advance, and stands essentially for scholarship. Here is a Woman's
College in whose curriculum, accomplishments, in the fashionable sense, have
no part ; a Woman's College which affords no chaperonage and warrants no
personal supervision of its students; one which offers young women collegiate
and post-graduate training on the same severe terms of absolute personal free-
dom and personal responsibility which the highest colleges for young men
offer their students.
This survey of existing advantages reveals our needs. Secondary instruc-
tion must be improved. This will be effected by a higher standard of College
admission. Colleges can make a common standard by rising to the highest
now fixed, but they can do this only if their endowments are large enough
to make them independent of tuition fees. Women, to aid higher education,
must become the patrons of its institutions. Wisdom indicates that their
bequests and gifts will be most beneficial if added to strong instead of weak
foundations. Let them give to existing colleges instead of planting new
ones. Let them give to the richest and ablest of existing colleges that admit
women, and let them endow colleges for women in Universities like Harvard
and Johns Hopkins so munificently that these stately institutions will desire
the alliance. Let women endow scholarships and fellowships for women in
the best institutions, that the ambition of young women may be stimulated
and that there may be a new meeting ground where merit alone will fix one's
position. These are lines of work whose development the limits of the pres-
ent address do not allow.
Education. 61
In considering this long struggle for educational opportunity, a struggle
whose last field is yet far removed, one must not permit resentment to dis-
tort the vision. There is in truth little occasion for resentment. So far as
our own country is concerned, the work of reducing a new continent to cul-
tivation and of supplanting barbarism with civilization, has been so vast that
every person has been valued by his ability to aid in this work, and every
education has been measured by the degree to which it would prepare its
possessor for this work. Society has not so continually and consciously dis-
criminated against women, as it has consciously and continually discriminated
against culture as an end, and in favor of culture as a means to lower ends.
In proportion as the conviction has grown that the higher education would
assist men in doing the work of men outside of the chair, the bar and the
pulpit, opportunities for their education have multiplied, and young men in
increasing numbers have been compelled or encouraged to use these oppor-
tunities.
It is now admitted that the higher education is essential to the success of
women who enter the fields of competitive intellectual service. The friends
of higher education have now to prove that it is not only the need of every
woman who looks to an industrial or professional career outside of her home,
but, considering the ideal interests of humanity, that it is the peculiar need of
young women whose tastes incline them to confine their activities to home
and society and whose circumstances enable them to do so. Women stand-
ing for the ideal, representing not what is, but what ought to be, should not
fear to proclaim the doctrine that the higher education adds its own intrinsic
value to that of the soul, and that this justifies the desire for it. Man's
superiority over the highest of the lower animals rests partly in this, that he
can adapt himself to any climate and sustain himself on the products of any
soil.
Man is thus self-adjusting by nature ; but the man whose natural capacity
for self-adjustment has been re-enforced by discipline and culture is hardly
less superior to the uneducated man than the uneducated civilized man is to
the savage or than the savage is to the brute. The education which adapts its
possessor to one certain condition of society, and to one place and activity
in that social state, renders him helpless whenever a social or indus-
trial change occurs. The uneducated man who knows but one craft or
occupation regards the inventor as his enemy and sees in each new dis-
covery a competitor. Such a man finds himself stranded by progress, while
his educated fellow-laborer can avail himself of the invention which, in rob-
bing him of his old work, gives him a higher task. With as much natural
tact and self-adaptation as man, such is the paralyzing influence which a
narrow education and the continual direction of her thoughts to the domestic
functions has exerted upon her, that inability to adjust herself to new cir-
cumstances is as marked a trait of the average woman of the upper classes, as
it is of the average man in the lowest and narrowest handicraft.
62 International Council of Women.
This incapacity for self-adjustment is the cause of the most pitiable object
and the origin of the saddest phrase in our language, viz., "The decayed
gentlewoman." This hapless creature is the result of a social custom which
demands that young women, whose families are in comfortable ciicumstances,
shall play with the half dozen years which intervene between school and
marriage. This is the very class of young women from which college candi-
dates should come. They have ability, means, leisure. It is the next duty
of women who stand for high purposes to create a public opinion which shall
encourage, nay, compel these young women to pursue the higher education.
The principle of the division of labor finds novel application in modern
life and especially in what, even in a democratic community, miy be called
the higher social circles. In such circles in the United States men are, by
common consent, the guardians of material interests, while women, by the
same authority, assume the direction of social (including spiritual) interests.
Consider for an instant what interests are represented in this Council. Al-
most every one of the eighty women on this programme represents a con-
stituency, an organized constituency of women. Each of these constituencies
numbers its members by scores, hundreds, thousands, some of them even by
scores and hundreds of thousands.
These constituencies are organized to protect and promote moral issues
which concern every class of every nationality ; to carry forward reforms
whose object is to free manhood from the thraldom of sensuality and to
arouse womanhood out of its selfish indifference and inertia. In no work is
the higher education, with all of the aspirations which it fosters and all of the
latent power which it liberates, more constantly available than in solving the
problems which arise in working with a part of humanity for the good of all
of it. I am sure we are all conscious that women as a class are inadequately
equipped for the service which humanity expects from them, which their
hearts incline them to do. It must be admitted that all women of this time
are self-made, for even the most highly educated women, even those educated
by the regular agencies of college and university, have for the.most part been
permitted merely, not encouraged, and have a consciousness that they have
directed their own development. It must be admitted that many conspicu-
ously useful and noble women suffer from defects which are the results and the
signs of self- making. They lack symmetry and a sense of proportion, and
are thus betrayed into inaccuracies, exaggerations and partial views. Vanity
impels the self-made to boast of their limitations as of high qualities, since
they consider every limitation a proof of native power. Only enormous
and exceptional moral force will save such an one from becoming a charlatan
and a demagogue. Philanthropists, humanitarians, and social reformers
should be fed on the fruits of such knowledge as philosophy, science,
economics, politics, history, and civil government. They need the discipline
which comes from long drill in logic, mathematics, and the classics — the dis-
Education. 63
cipline which will give a delight in accuracy, a sense ot justice, moderation,
and an ability to shift one's point of view. The division of labor between
the sexes indicated above, and the magnitude of the problems which woman
has volunteered to solve, demand proportional preparation.
Some one objects that culture is selfish and is not the food upon which
philanthropists thrive ; that culture is conservative and does not nourish
reformers. To those objections this Council is sufficient reply. The object of
culture is to grow into the image of God — the office of life is to do His work.
In God is the correlation of divine forces, Love, Truth, Wisdom, Freedom.
Too long women have regarded only one feature of the divine parent after
whom they have sought to fashion themselves. Without Wisdom the works
of Love can not be done. Culture is a force as irresistible as gravity; to the
class in which it centers power and the signs of power will come.
The next speaker was Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, the
cultured and beloved Hindoo, now endeavoring to secure in
this country co-operation in the work of educating the child-
widows of India.
THE WOMEN OF INDIA.
Pundita Ramabai. My object in appearing before you to-night is to tell
you something of the educational condition of the women in India.
In olden times in our country the custom used to be that some few men
and only a very few women were allowed to be educated. Those who were
especially of the family of what we call the Brahmins, or priestly caste, a
handful of them had obtained higher education, and were also standing at
that time on the same footing as our great men. They used to hold discourse
with men on equal terms, and it is said in some of the secret books of the
Hindoos that once on a time there was a woman who wielded great power
over the assembly of sages, and even held conversation with one of the
greatest philosophers of that time. Afterwards it was thought best by our
men to keep the women completely in ignorance, so that they might have more
power over them. I do not blame them for that ; it was quite natural they
wanted to have power over them, and, of course, our men were very intelli-
gent and bright, as a rule, and these men had discovered the fact that if
education was given to women it would be impossible for them to keep them
under complete subjection. They wanted to make the women slaves of the
husbands, and it was said by the government that a woman should never have
any other god but her husband, and of course an educated woman would
doubt the fact whether some men could be divine beings.
Ignorant people, and even sometimes intelligent people, take anything on
the teaching of their priests ; and the ignorant women of India are told by
the priests that they have no place in heaven but through their husbands,
and their salvation must be obtained through their husbands, and if they are
64 International Council of Women.
in subjection to them and always do what the priests say they will be all right ;
there is no necessity of their having education. Moreover, it is thought
that man is woman's shield, as an umbrella that shields any person from sun-
shine or rain ; and also he is thought to defend woman from any evils that
arise in the world. It is said by the priests that education will enable you
to make a living, and if you go a little further in education it will make you
a supreme being. But you need not make your living, the man will make
your living for you, and if you are a good wife and think of your husband
at the time of death, you will be born a man the next time you come to this
world.
So the time went on, and women were completely deprived of any kind
of education, except now and then we had some princes and some learned
men who wanted to have wives beside them who could read and write,
especially some of our great princes. And so a great many women were
allowed to have just education enough to make verses in praise of the men
and praise them all the time ; so the men got all the good they could.
But the common women were not allowed, of course, to have any educa-
tion at all. There were some primary schools in our country, and before
the little girls of eight or nine were betrothed they were allowed to go with the
boys and have some little lessons, just in reading and writing. They seldom
went further than learning the alphabet and to spell their own names and
the family names; that was all. In these days we have primary schools all
over India. Some are established by the missionaries, some by the English
government, and some are supported by private families of intelligent men.
I should not say families, but by intelligent men alone, and these schools
give some little education to the women. I ought not to say women, but
little girls eight or nine years of age — that is the school-going age, and after
a girl is nine years of age she is taken from that school and betrothed to a
boy of her own age, and that is the end of her education. In that time of
two years she learns to read a little.
She finds in her reading-book some stories of animals, about the dog that
took a slice of bread and crossed a brook and saw his shadow in the brook
and went after that shadow and lost what he had in his mouth, and so the
moral is taught ; and there are some other stories like that, and also some
history and some geography. But after a girl is betrothed she loses that
opportunity for learning reading and writing, for our good mothers-in-law
are very much opposed to education of women as a rule. These good moth-
ers-in-law do not like the idea of their daughters having any education or
advantage over them, and so, of course, they are not allowed to continue their
education at all, and after their betrothal they have to forget whatever they
have learned in these primary schools.
There are some high schools in our country ; there is one in Calcutta, and
there is one in Bombay, and there may be one middle-class school in Madras.
Education. 65
There is one high school at Poonah also. There are some schools a little
higher than primary schools, called second-grade schools, to which girls
go and learn six reading-books, which are appointed by the government.
In these six standard books we have a few stories and a little something
about the structure of the eye, and the liver, and something about the sun,
and the English government coming into our country and kindly providing
us with these beautiful things we have to-day, and also a record of the proc-
lamation of 1858, in which year the Queen of England took the position
of ruler of India, and in that proclamation all the rules are laid down how
the country will be governed by the English, and how liberal they will be.
All these are very good things to know.
There is a little history — a history in a dialogue form. We Orientals are
famous for these dialogues. One man asks a question and the teacher answers,
and in that history we are told that India had no history of its own before
the Europeans went to India. All the people were fighting each other, and
there was no peace and no comfort ; there were highway robbers and tigers
and snakes, and the women threw their babies into the Ganges, and a good
many people threw themselves under the car of Juggernaut, and these English
people brought peace to us; these people were all very bad, but since the
English government went there they have begun to reform a little, and the
English have treated us very kindly and honestly, and all that is desired now
is to be faithful to the English government, and to be good and to try to be
honest. These are the things that are taught in this history, and also we are
taught in a dialogue form how many kings there were and how many battles
were fought and how many wives the kings had, etc.
But there is a little brighter side. In 1878 the doors of the universities of
India were thrown open to women. The government was so kind as to say
that women might come and pass examinations with men, if they chose to
do so, but of course that choice was not their own. How could they do
such a thing as that when there were no preparatory instructions given them ?
There was only one high school, and in that high school a woman who was
examined was the first woman who passed the high examination. And that
was the beginning of the real high education.
Calcutta has taken the foremost ground in woman's higher education.
There is a high school there, and there are also a great many other advantages
for women, especially among the Brahmins of Calcutta, called heretics by the
other Brahmins. These are not so much opposed to the education of women ;
they allow a few of their girls to remain unmarried and give them higher
education, but public sentiment is against them.
A great change has taken place in the higher education of women in India
since 1883. Just one year before that time an educational commission, as it
was called, was appointed by the English government which went all over the
country and investigated the matter of education of boys and girls, and these
66 International Council of Women.
English officials, some of them, were very learned men, who knew what the
condition of education was in India, and they appointed representative men
to come and give their testimony as to the necessary changes in the educa-
tional system of the country, and ever since that time many people have
tried to get women to enter the medical colleges of India. The Hindoos
liken education to nectar, and they say if women have education they will
become immortal and get all the country and kill the men. If education is
given to women, of course the women will turn on the men and tread them
down and kill them or do something dreadful, and so, of course, they think it
best not to give them education. They believe, in common with most peo-
ple, that woman was created from the rib of Adam, and just as the rib is
crooked so woman is crooked, and if they try to make her straight she never
will be straight, and since the object of education is to try to make people
straight it is of no use to give it to woman.
Some said that the very constitution of woman was not fit for education ;
these good angels and beautiful beings were too delicate to study anything.
They were not too delicate to work in the fields, and carry brick, and climb
three stories, and work with men, and, in addition to that, to do the house-
work and take care of the baby, and take care of the husband, too ; but for
education they were too delicate. And they said their brains did not weigh
as heavy as men's brains, and so it was not best to give us any higher educa-
tion at all; our brains could not stand the exertion, and that the brains, if
once turned away from the housework and care of babies, it would increase
the misery and bring quarrels into the family. In our country we are not
strange to quarrels.
Again, at certain times it was thought that it was necessary for women to
have some physicians of their own sex, but when the question came before
the government they hesitated to give women any place in their colleges, so
they wanted to obtain the opinion of all our men who were highly edu-
cated, and a good many of them answered in the usual way, that if medical
education were given to women they would surely be unsexed by it, and
therefore they must not be given it. But somehow or other a few people pre-
vailed over this idea and at last the government threw open the college doors
to women, and now there are a few women who go and take their lessons with
men, and, what I am proud to say, in Bombay a few English women and a
few Hindoos and a few Parsee women go there to take their lessons. When
they went with the men they were not hooted and treated badly, but, what is
very surprising to know, the men treated them very nicely indeed. But
there are no separate colleges provided for women. In 1883 one °f our
high-caste women who wanted higher education had no college open to her
and she left that country and came to the United States to obtain that edu-
cation. At that time, of course, a great many people did not like the idea,
and some thought that she would surely fail, but it was proved by her experi-
Education. 67
ence that even Hindoo women had some brains; that even those high-caste
women who had been shut out for ages and ages could acquire a medical
education. And it was just two years ago that that high-caste woman gradu-
ated in the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She proved that woman could
learn these things, and even that after learning them she could keep her sex
unchanged. She went to our country and died. At the same time she has
done some work that will last, I believe, more than her life would.
It is a matter of thankfulness to me that a few women in Madras are tak-
ing steps to have a medical college, and there are some in Bombay who are
preparing to be physicians and practice medicine in their own country, and
there are a half-dozen or a dozen who are graduates of the Calcutta college.
And other movements are being employed to give women some higher edu-
cation. But the greatest need of India to-day is for women teachers of our
own country. There is no such thing as training colleges for our women.
It is true that there are three normal schools in our country, and in these
some little education is given to the future teachers.
The third special paper on the topic of the evening, by Mrs.
Sarah B. Cooper, President of the Golden Gate Kindergarten
Association, was read by Mrs. Frances E. Parker, of Illinois:
THE KINDERGARTEN IN ITS DEVELOPMENT OF FACULTY.
I believe, dear friends, there is within us a vast domain of unexplored ter-
ritory, as yet unpre^mpted and uncultivated, toward which the eye of Freder-
ick Froebel, that great educational Columbus, was directed with a steady
and divining gaze. And to-day the great educational principles which he
discovered and laid down are going forth in every direction, conquering and
to conquer. The kindergarten is his enduring monument.
The kindergarten concerns itself more with the development of faculty
than with the mere imparting of knowledge. It recognizes the fact that all
true education is learning transformed to faculty. It does not ask so much,
" What does the child know?" as "Has the child learned how to learri?"
It looks less to mere acquirements than to the capacity to acquire. It is
teaching the little child to teach himself. It is controlling the little child
that he may learn the art of self-control. The kindergarten devotes itself
more to ideas than to words ; more to things than to books. It begets
within the child the power of assimilating knowledge for the highest uses of
life.
The senses are sharpened, the hands are trained, and the body is made
lithe and active. The gifts and occupations represent every kind of techni-
cal activity. The children must work for what they get. They learn
through doing. They thus develop patience, perseverance, skill, and will-
power. They are encouraged by every fresh achievement. What they
know they must know thoroughly. In his occupations in the kindergarten
68 International Council of Women.
the child is required to handle, combine, and create. " Let the very play-
things of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of the coming
man," said Aristotle. It is early training that makes the master. This
universal instinct of play in the child means something. It should be turned
to good account. It should be made constructive in its outcome instead of
destructive. This restless activity of the child is the foundation of the inde-
fatigable enterprise of the man. This habit of work must be formed early
in life, if we would have it a pleasure. Activity is the law of healthful child-
hood. Turn it to good account ! The perceptive faculties in a well-endowed
child are far in excess of the reflective faculties. He sees everything. He
wants to know about everything. He will find out if he can. Sensible
mothers understand this fact, and keep their household gods well out of the
way of the young "heir apparent." Just as old Dolly Winthrop said in
" Silas Marner : " "If you can't bring your mind to frighten the child off
touching things, you must do what you can to keep 'em out of the way.
That's what I do vvi' the pups as the lads are allays a rearing. They will
worry and gnaw — worry and gnaw they will, if it was one's Sunday cap as
hung anywhere so as they could drag it. They know no difference, God help
'em; it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets 'em on, that's what's it is."
That's exactly what it is with the restless child. It's the pushing of the
teeth — the intellectual molars and bicuspids, so to speak. They are getting
ready to masticate their mental food.
Bodily vigor, mental activity, and moral integrity are indispensable to a
perfected lite. All these are cherished and developed in the kindergarten.
All these make the man and woman and prepare them for efficient work
in every department of life. Every child should have the privilege of making
the most of himself by unfolding all that is in him. As has been truly said,
" the poor man suffers wrong when his education is so defective that he can
not use his faculties aright, when his senses are blunted, his observation and
judgment insecure." This wrong to the poor may be avoided by early me-
thodical training in the kindergarten, thus fitting them for industrial pursuits.
For in the kindergarten development, whatever comes in at the open door
of the senses is turned into practical power. Habits of observation are cul-
tivated. Observing is more than seeing. The child in the kindergarten is
taught to observe — that is, to notice with attention — to see truly. What he
learns in the kindergarten is calculated to make him keep his eyes wide open
to the world about him. He is taught to think, and that is the primal thing.
The kindergarten makes the knowledge of ideas wait upon the knowledge of
facts, just as it subordinates the cultivation of the memory to the develop-
ment of faculty — every faculty of a child is to be developed. And this edu-
cating together the head, heart, and hand is the great need of the nation
to-day.
The kindergarten is the best agency for setting in motion the physical,
Education. 69
mental, and moral machinery of a little child, that it may do its own work
in its own way. It is the rain and dew and sun to wake the sleeping germ
and bring it into self-activity and growth. The heart as well as the head
comes in for its share of training. The kindergarten regards right action to
be quite as important as rare scholarship. It works for both, knowing that
ignorance and lack of character in the masses will never breed wisdom so
long as ignorance and lack of character in the individual breed folly. What
we need to do is to bring more happiness into childhood, and then we shall
bring more virtue, for "virtue kindles at the touch of joy." The kinder-
garten is the " Paradise of Childhood." Frcebel insisted that education and
happiness should be wedded J that there should be as much pleasure in satis-
fying intellectual hunger as physical hunger. And should not this be so ?
Is it not more or less the fault of methods that it is not so ?
And just here I wish to say that the moral and religious influences of the
kindergarten can scarcely be overestimated. The kindergarten does not at-
tribute every mistake of a child to total depravity. To be perpetually tell-
ing a little child, even a very naughty child, that there is no good thing in
him, that he is vile and corrupt, is one of the very best ways of making a
rascal out of him if he has any spirit in him, and of making a little hypo-
crite out of him if he is mean-spirited and weak. And this holds equally
true of all children, whether they come from the palatial homes of the rich
or the wretched homes of the poor. There is more ignorance than deprav-
ity when a little child goes wrong. He must stumble and fall many times
before he learns to walk uprightly, either physically or spiritually. He must
learn to climb the stairs of moral difficulty as he learned to climb the house-
hold stairs. As we patiently wait for the body to unfold and do its best,
wisely guiding it all the while, so should we patiently wait for the soul's
unfolding. All education is a growth, not a creation. And to all growth
belongs the element of time. A child goes to the kindergarten as an appren-
tice goes into a shop, to learn something. He knows little. He has every-
thing to find out. His mind is the tool-chest. His faculties are the imple-
ments. Suppose he does make mistakes. His mistakes are not depravity.
We are none of us born with the "trade of conduct " learned. What are
the mistakes of a child ? It is the little carpenter at work with the hammer
and nails, trying his best to drive the nail, but hitting his thumb instead of
the nail. Poor little fellow ! He has the worst of it. See that irrepressible
boy ! The basilar faculties in him are tremendous. They are the drive-
wheels which, rightly used, will make him a leader and a commander among
men. Train that boy in and through these faculties. All the faculties have
mates. Over against combativeness stands benevolence. If the former is
likely to get on the rampage, touch up the latter. If courage is likely to
mount into rashness, touch up fear a little. The primal ideal of all govern-
ment should be to teach a child to govern himself at the earliest possible
70 International Council of Women.
period. And to learn how to govern himself a child must be indulged in
self-government. The true teacher will be aiming all the time at the child's
enfranchisement — not in making him an unwilling slave. The law of kind-
ness bodied forth in eye and lip and hand will make a royal government.
The rafters of love will make a home of law. And this is the principle on
which the kindergarten governs its pupils.
The law of duty is recognized by the little ones as the law of love. They
are taught to love one another, to help one another, to be kind to one another,
to care for one another. The child in the kindergarten is not only told to
be good, but he is actually helped to be good. The very foundations on
which true character rests are laid in the kindergarten. Habits of virtue,
truth, purity and usefulness are here inculcated, and what is character but
crystallized habit?
As to the moral effect of the kindergarten, a little three-year-old can best
tell the story. A bright little blonde lassie of three years, belonging to one
of our kindergartens, was holding tightly the hand of her lady guardian as
they wandered among the marvels of the Mechanics' Institute Fair. It was
high carnival with the little kindergarteners. This nervous little midget was
wild with delight at the wonderful things to be seen on every hand. Just
then she was delving into the mysteries of the chicken incubator. Suddenly
one of the regular deputized policemen who do duty during the fair passed
by. He did not escape the vigilance of " little blue eyes."
"See, there's a perlice ! " she ejaculated, with resonant, ringing tone,
pointing her little finger deprecatingly as she spoke. " There he goes," she
added, with increased fervor. " Why, he needn't be a watchin' of us, 'cos
we don't nip nothin' now, sence we went to the kindergarten ! "
The poor little dear — she had no idea that a "perlice" could have any
other possible vocation than to be watching her and the other little Barbary
Coasters, who had been wont aforetime to "nip" fruit and vegetables on
the sly as a sort of filial duty imposed by thriftless, shiftless parentage.
Ten years ago there was not a single free kindergarten west of the Rocky
Mountains. There are now over thirty in Sa i Francisco alone, including
those in orphanages and day homes. Branching out from San Francisco as
a center, they have extended in every direction, from the extreme northern
part of Washington Territory to Lower California and New Mexico, and
they have planted themselves in Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, and in almost
every large city in California. The work in San Francisco has been phe-
nomenal. No city in the Union has made more rapid strides in this work
among the little children than San Francisco. This is owing to the fact that
persons of large wealth have been induced to study the work for themselves,
and have become convinced of its permanent and essential value to the State.
Foremost among those who have given to the support of these kindergartens
is Mrs. Leland Stanford, who has, from first to last, given over $30,000 to
Education. 71
the support of these beneficent schools for the neglected children of San
Francisco. Over eight hundred children have been under training in the
Stanford kindergartens the past year. Mrs. Senator Hearst and others of
generous mind also support these schools.
As the kindergarten is the very basis of technical and industrial education,
Mrs. Stanford has made a study of it, in connection with the great plans
contemplated by the Leland Stanford, Jr., University. The necessity of
unfolding the minds of little children through their senses, rather than dwarf-
ing them through the meaningless repetition of mere words, is coming to be
felt more and more by all thoughtful educators. It is the aim of the kinder-
garten to make men and women who will be self-governing and thus be a
law unto themselves ; men and women who will succeed by their own skill
and industry. Hence the kindergarten gets hold of the little child just as
early in life as possible — the earlier the better. It believes, with Lord Brough-
ham, that a child can and does learn more before the age of six years than
it does or can learn after that age during his whole lite, however long it may
be. For this is the root-life of the human plant, and the root-life must for-
ever determine what the stem and blossom shall be. In short, the world is
beginning to recognize the fact that a general education that has not in it
some provision for a special education and training in some particular in-
dustry is practically a failure. Technical and industrial education for the
people is no theory. It is a question of civilization. It is a national ques-
tion, and touches the very existence of the state. The kindergarten lies at
the foundation of this sort of education. All honor, then, to those who
foster these blessed schools for little children.
Governor Stanford struck the key-note when he said that he believed the
surest foundation on which any educational structure could rest was the rock
of thorough kindergarten training, begun at the earliest possible age — at
the age when moral and industrious habits are most easily formed, the taste
improved, and the finer feelings which give fiber to the will are cultivated.
* * *
And the primal aim of all education, from the kindergarten straight
through to the university, should be the unfolding of all that is in the human
being, the equipping of the young for maintaining themselves in honest
independence. Some one has said there are three ways of earning a living —
by working, by begging, or by stealing — and those who come to years of
responsibility and do not work are doing one of the other two things, dress
it out in whatever pretty guise you please. I believe it was Florence Night-
ingale who said, " If to three R's, reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic, there be
not added something that will give the mind a practical turn, we shall soon
have a fourth R, which shall stand for rascality." * * *
That notable man, General John Eaton, the late United States Commis-
sioner of Education, in his annual report made this significant suggestion :
72 International Council of Women.
"The experience of mob violence we have passed through should suffice to
bring us to the conviction that our safety is only in the most vigilant use of
every instrumentality fitted to assure the thorough training of every child in
the land, not only in virtue and intelligence, but also in the pursuit of some
useful and honorable vocation." Better, far better, that we plant kindergar-
tens and organize industrial schools and educate the young for work, than to
let them grow up in such a manner as to be good for nothing else than to
form Jacobin clubs and revolutionary brigades, which will be the beginning
of the end of our greatness and prosperity, and of the Republic itself. We
may make laws and constitutions on paper, but character is a growth, and to
all growth belongs the element of time. We must call the little children
from the very earliest years and prepare them for useful and honorable citi-'
zenship. I have tried to outline the plan ; let me briefly summarize : Take
the very little child into the kindergarten and there begin the work of phys-
ical, mental, and moral training ; put the child in possession of his powers ;
develop his faculties ; unfold his moral nature ; cultivate mechanical skill in
the use of the hands ; give him a sense of symmetry and harmony ; a quick
judgment of number, measure, and size; stimulate his inventive faculties;
make him familiar with the customs and usages of well-ordered lives ; teach
him to be kind, courteous, helpful, and unselfish ; inspire him to love what-
soever things are true and pure and right and kind and noble ; and thus
equipped physically, mentally and morally, send him forth to the wider
range of study, which should include within its scope some sort of industrial
training — that is, the putting of the boy or girl into the possession of the
tools for technical employment or for the cultivation of the arts of drawing
and kindred employments — and still further on the boy and girl should have
a completed trade. Thus they will be prepared to solve the rugged problem
of existence by earning their own living through honest, faithful work.
* * *
Louisa Reed Stowell, M. S., F. R. M. S., delegate of the
Western Association of Collegiate Alumnae, read the following
paper :
RETROSPECTION.
Mrs. Stowell. The annals of education during the early part of this
century furnish us with the story of a girl who was accustomed to sit on the
steps of a Boston school-house to listen to the boys' recitations. We may
regard this young person as the typical woman of our century, and the
purpose of my paper will be an effort to show how long she remained
on the steps and what direction she took when she left them. * * *
In 1854 one woman, speaking for many, says: " We claim the opportu-
nity for unfolding our powers in the conditions most favorable to growth.
We demand education that can give efficiency to the intellect, light to the
Education. 73
feelings, and dignity to the whole character." From the tone of some res-
olutions adopted at an educational convention in New York it would seem
that such expressions were becoming frequent. " Woman's education,"
said the gentlemen in convention, " being intended especially to prepare
her for the duties of wife and motherhood, should be concrete rather than
abstract. It should be for use. In the study of arithmetic, for instance, the
object should be to learn its practical application and not to become con-
versant with the principles of numbers. Culinary matters should be the
basis, and ornamental branches the finish of her education."
The door was not opened, but, evidently, the knocking was becoming
somewhat annoying to those within ; nothing easier than to open a window
and advise those women to go home and attend to cooking I Did they go?
We shall see ! We have another voice from one of the girls on the steps in
the same year, 1854. " We claim," she says, " the opportunity of pursu-
ing the same course of study provided for males, and that this shall be lim-
ited only by inclination or capacity." To the question, " Are there not
now ample opportunities for this extended culture?" she replies emphat-
ically, "There is scarcely a single seminary in the land that pretends to
give the severe discipline of the male schools. Even in the normal schools
a lower course of study is provided for women. This is a deep and burning
disgrace!" Two years later Mrs. Seager, of the Genesee Wesleyan Sem-
inary, asks, " Why should the munificence of rulers and legislatures be
poured out for the ample, the profuse endowment of institutions for the
benefit of one sex from the privileges of which the other is excluded?" At
about this period a woman in Michigan, through the medium of an
educational journal, asks that her State should endow a university for
women, as it had already done for men.
Following speedily upon the appeals we have quoted came responses, not
at first from institutions, but from individual men — men who are an honor
to manhood, an honor to humanity. President Fairchild, of Ohio; Mat-
thew Vassar and Henry W. Sage, of New York ; William Ellery Channing
and Mark Hopkins, of Massachusetts, and President James B. Angell, of
Michigan, are among those who, at an early date and while the cause was
still an unpopular one, responded in no uncertain tone. " That women are
capable of the highest culture," said the gentleman last named, " the gen-
eration to which Mrs. Somerville and Mrs. Browning belong will hardly
deny. All must admit that it would be a great gain if we could secure to
every young woman who desires it an education as thorough, generous, and
stimulating as our colleges afford to young men." * * * From the date
last named, progress was sure and at times rapid. Colleges for women were
rapidly multiplied in the East, while in the West the gains of co-education
made such expedients unnecessary.
The report of the Commissioner of Education presents some statistics__at
6
74 International Council of Women.
this point that for brilliant contrast would rejoice the heart of a Macaulay.
In 1870 there were 33 schools for women that could be called colleges; in
1875 there were 202 ; and while in 1855 there were not one-half dozen of the
higher schools open to women, to-day there are not one-half dozen worthy
of the name whose doors are closed to them.
Columbia has given her degree to Alice Freeman Palmer, and has, at a
very recent date, opened her doors to women who wish to do post-graduate
work. Yale gave a degree to a woman in 1885 ; Johns Hopkins has also con-
ferred a degree on a woman, and we may safely conclude that whatever reso-
lutions may be formulated nereafter, these cases will prove precedents
-dangerous to the records of those worthy institutions. Princeton has not
yet shown a similar hospitality ; but, in the address of Dr. Patton, the
■recently appointed president, we find sentences that indicate the presence of
3evers of modern thought, and we are too well acquainted with the
-chemistry of that ingredient to doubt the result. "We grow!" says
iDr. Patton. " We need more students. There are fields already white
tto the harvest, and Princeton must put in the sickle pretty soon or be con-
tent to be a gleaner by the wayside." And again he says : " There are some
good things in Paris, in Edinburgh, in Berlin; but the typical American
university will not be a simple imitation of any of these."
Probably the good president spoke better than he knew. However that
may be, we prophesy that Princeton will one day admit that the genius of
the American college is not in sympathy with any ruling that excludes from
the halls of learning any person or class of persons who desire their advan-
tages. Princeton needs more students ! Let her open her doors to women
and she will find them. The fields are indeed white to the harvest, and we
await the sickle.
As I have said, in 1855 there were not one-half dozen of the better col-
leges open to women. To-day the graduates of the higher halls of learning
are numbered by thousands. The change in public sentiment is not less pro-
nounced and encouraging. I quote from educational literature of the fifth
and eighth decades of this country a few sentences which will serve as
straws to show the changing course of the current.
1850. " Culture for women should never develop into learning. Only an
unwomanly woman could try to become learned, and she would try in vain,
as she has not the mental ability of a man."
1880. " The admission of women into schools heretofore exclusively open
to men is the straw on the moving current to tell us what is coming. It is
in accordance with the spirit of our institutions that women shall be treated
as self-determining beings." * * *
Of the many collegiate alumnae who are in happy homes, brightening and
purifying our social life, and leading the way to a most enlightened mother-
hood, I can not speak further than to congratulate our country on their num-
Education. 75
berand to wish it much larger than it is. * * * If I were to state, in a
word, the duty of our time, I should declare it to be an unending effort to
prove the beneficial effects of the higher training of women on our social
and national life. * * *
Miss Rena A. Michaels, Ph. D., Dean of the Woman's Col-
lege, Northwestern University, then spoke on
CO-EDUCATION.
Dean Michaels. The stable arguments of the anti-coeducationists of
twenty years ago are certainly familiar to you all. They told us that the
young women could not endure the strain of a university training, and,
therefore, they added that the standard of the university curricula would
have to be lowered if young women were admitted. In those days they
were very fond of hanging above our heads that sword of Damocles — namely,
that young women who were co-educated would never have the honor, as
Lucy Stone has put it, of being even a relict of Mr. Brown or Mr. Jones.
These arguments have been so thoroughly refuted by the logic of facts
that we never hear them mentioned in these days unless, indeed, it is in some
of Mrs. Linton's absurdities or by some Rip Van Winkle reviewer, who
seems for the last fifteen years to have been a denizen of Sleepy Hollow.
I doubt not that there are many of my hearers who have read Dr.
Winchell's excellent book, entitled "Sketches of Creation." You re-
member, in the closing chapters of that book, he has described what may
be possibly the closing scene in the history of this planet. That he has
taken that asserted scientific fact that the earth is gradually cooling off, and
has evolved it to its logical conclusion. He has drawn a very vivid picture
of that possible time when the northern and southern polar belts shall have
gradually approached each other until there is left only that little line of
verdure along the equator, and gradually this, too, shall be covered with ice
and snow ; and this race which has built its palaces, its temples, and its domes
shall have dwindled down to a solitary aged couple, childless and alone, the
sad remnant of that race that had its beginning in the Garden of Eden.
But when we examine the statistics of the anti-coeducationists, we see that
upon no such touching scene will the march of progress of modern history
bring us; for under these gradually changing social conditions that day must
surely come when this race, with all its magnificent possibilities of intellect
and handicraft; this race that has built its Babylon, its Troy, its Athens, its
Rome, its Paris and its Washington ; this race that has had its Moses, its David,
its St. Paul, its Homer, its Virgil, its Dante, its Shakespeare and its Brown-
ing; this race that has had its Solomon, its Darius, its Caesar, its Charle-
magne, its Napoleon, its Gladstone; this race, with all its magnificent possi-
bilities, I say, shall in the end have dwindled down to a solitary old maid
standing on the equator, friendless and alone, with no loving hand to write
her epitaph, " Died of eating forbidden fruit."
76 International Council of Women.
We are met in these days by very many objectors to co-education, thought-
ful men and women who have no fear for the moral effects of co-education,
and have only praise for its intellectual results; but they come to us with
this earnest question : "What is to be the effect upon home life? Are our
girls to become masculine?" St. Beuve said that in three-fourths of men
there is a poet, who sometimes dies young ; and in my relations with young
women 1 am convinced that in every girl there is a mother, and that, whether
ever appearing in the actual state of motherhood or not, the girl or the
woman is always exercising that universal instinct of motherhood within her.
You will pardon me if I draw the illustration of my thought from the
institution with which I have the honor to be connected. I am sure it is
equally true at Ann Arbor or at Cornell as at Evanston. As I go daily into
the rooms of my young women I am convinced that no amount of Greek or
philosophy or mathematics will ever eradicate from the soul of the girl the
home instinct. If I go into the room of the young man, I find it is the
place where he keeps his books, where he studies, where he sleeps ; it is his
mental workshop; his life is sought elsewhere ; his pleasures are found else-
where. But when I go into the room of my young woman, I find dainty cur-
tains, pictures, needlework, books of poetry and art, and the geranium and
pet canary in the window; not a workshop, but a home where the young
woman naturally lives out the instinct of her mother-heart — that instinct which
leads her to want something that is dependent on her for love and care.
We hear a great many philippics in these days about the influence of books
upon women ; but the fact is that an all-wise Creator has so implanted the
instinct of wife-love and mother-love in the soul of woman that no educa-
tion nor co-education — no, nor the ballot-box itself — will ever be able to eradi-
cate it. I care not how long a young woman's soul may have pulsated to the
rhythm of the Homeric meters; I care not, indeed, how long she may have
been under the alluring charms of conic sections; when all is tried and all
is done and all is counted, all great arts and all great philosophies, just let
the man appear whom her soul recognizes, and straightway love puts its hand
out and outreaches all things. I have noticed that educated women make
just as many blunders in the choice of their husbands as do educated men in
the choice of their wives.
You see in the papers that the West is co-educational, and I want to make
it emphatic. You doubtless have seen also the statement that a certain col-
lege in the West has lately excluded young women. I think the name of
that college is Adelbert. We never knew of it until they excluded young
women, and we thought at the time it was a very shrewd advertising dodge.
But since I have come to Washington and met one of the good ladies of Cleve-
land, I have been let into the secret. She tells me that the young women
took all the salutatories and valedictories, and, moreover, that the college had
recently elected a president who had been dead fifty years, although unfor-
Education. 77
tunately not buried. I understand that Adelbert is talking about an annex.
I want to say here to-night, and I can say it with grace, because I am an
Eastern woman, that those bright, enthusiastic, large-brained and big-hearted
young women of the West, those young women who have in their eyes the
distant horizons of their prairie homes, will have nothing to do with annexes.
Michigan University has taught them too good a lesson in the other direc-
tion. In the Mississippi Valley there is growing up another society — a soci-
ety that will have a new type of manhood and of womanhood, because it is
co educational. Young men and women are learning to have a mutual respect
for each other intellectually and morally. It was in the West, among the
Wisconsin hills, that that girl was born, who, as the woman Frances Willard,
the woman and the philanthropist, is loved and revered by all the young
women of America for her vestal purity. My girls call her " St. Frances."
She is the woman whose genius and deep-veined humanity and inspiring
words of sympathy have touched and united the men and women of two
continents. Such is the type of womanhood that is being developed in the
Mississippi Valley, and it is the type of which the poets dream.
Cora A. Benneson, A. M., L. L. B., Michigan University ;
Fellow in History, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, was the
next speaker.
COLLEGE FELLOWSHIPS FOR WOMEN.
Miss Benneson. I beg to call your attention to the benefits of a move-
ment quite new in the history of higher education — the founding of college
fellowships for women. And, lest there should be any misapprehension, let
me ask you, in the beginning, not to confound fellowships with scholar-
ships.
Scholarships are commonly aids granted to undergraduates to enable them
to complete a college course when they have p3cuniary need of such assist-
ance, or they are sometimes given, as at Cornell University, to those candi-
dates for admission who pass the best examinations, ability alone being con-
sidered. Most of our colleges offer scholarships.
Fellowships, on the other hand, are honors conferred on graduates who
have shown special proficiency in some subject, to give them opportunity for
advanced study of a high character. The holder of a fellowship is expected
to reside at the college and to continue her work in the main independently,
but may have the supervision and assistance of professors, the use of libraries
and apparatus. Besides free residence and tuition, an amount is usually
granted her, about equal to the expenses of a college year.
The advantages of fellowship are twofold: first, to the college; second,
to the holder of the fellowship.
The scholarship and culture of the college are promoted by the presence
of a number of students of advanced standing, pursuing special researches
78 International Council of Women.
with enthusiasm. A beneficial influence is exerted upon the entire life of
the institution. The Fellows are naturally leaders in the debating societies,
the literary and scientific organizations. The under-graduates are aided by
observing the aims and methods of students of longer experience. The fel-
lowships bridge over, in a measure, that unfortunate gulf which often lies
between the faculty and the great body of the students. Occupying an
intermediate position between the two, the FeHows, if they will, may fre-
quently render substantial assistance to the under-graduates, whose difficul-
ties they understand because they have so recently been in the same posi-
tion themselves, while it may perhaps be helpful for professors, at times, to
know from those more constantly associated with the students than it is pos-
sible for them to be, how far their methods are meeting the needs of their
classes.
To the holder of a fellowship, its value will depend upon her personal
ability. At the least, it is an opportunity to test her power. If she have
natural fitness for her work and habits of industry, she may obtain a grasp
of her subject which will lead to exceptional usefulness. If the fellowship
fall to one of rare talent, she may be enabled thereby to add directly to the
sum of the world's knowledge.
The spheres of human thought have now so widened that, in order to
render any important service in the way of original work, it is necessary to
become a specialist. A fellowship offers the best conditions for this. The
student is relieved from care as to material wants. She has at her command
libraries, laboratories, and all of the college appliances for research and
experiment, with a previous training which teaches her how to use these,
and she has her time free from interruption. Only those can appreciate the
full value of such aids who have tried to pursue investigations far from any
good library or center of learning, or amid pressing social claims.
The usual curriculum of a college covers so w ide a variety of topics that,
even under the elective system, it offers little opportunity for specializing ;
nor is it well to specialize until the foundations of a liberal education are laid.
But a fellowship comes as a supplement to a college course, after the tastes
are clearly defined, and then the attention may be directed to one subject
with hope of mastering it, and without great danger of narrowness.
The system of fellowships was introduced into this country from Great
Britain, but, like most of the institutions we have borrowed from her, has
been variously modified to suit American ideas. For a long time the older
colleges of our country have offered such honors to men. Harvard has
13 fellowships; Yale, 3; Columbia, 7; Princeton, 7; Washington and Lee
University, 1; Pennsylvania University, 1. These have been restricted,
with a few exceptions, to their own graduates. To develop the system on a
broader plan and to make it a most conspicuous success was reserved for
Johns Hopkins University. It opened its twenty fellowships to graduates
Education. 79
B £|
from any college, and, as a consequence, has drawn to itself from the best
talent of all. To-day, when a professor's chair is vacant, his successor is
quite apt to be sought among the fellows of Johns Hopkins University.
Similar results are to be hoped from the founding of college fellowships
for women. Not only will they offer opportunity for excellence in the
chosen specialties, but institutions will know where to look when they wish
professors or teachers in those subjects. To-day, even in the colleges
exclusively for women, with the exception of Wellesley, there is a much
larger number of men than women in the faculties, while few of" our leading
co-educational institutions have yet recognized the attainments of their
women by appointments to professorships.
At present the fellowships open to women are 8 at Cornell University, 6
at Bryn Mawr College, i at Wesleyan University. The eight fellowships at
Cornell are conferred upon men and women on equal terms, while a portion
of the Sage fund, amounting to $50,000, has been set apart for the estab-
lishment of scholarships and fellowships for women exclusively. The
appointments are for one year, or, in cases of exceptional merit, for two
years.
Of the six fellowships at Bryn Mawr five are open to graduates of any col-
lege of good standing, and, " generally speaking, are given to the candidate
who has studied the longest or whose work affords the best promise of future
success." (See Byrn Mawr College programme.) They are awarded in the
subjects of Biology, History, Mathematics, Greek and English. One, the Eu-
ropean fellowship, is restricted to Byrn Mawr graduates, is unlimited as to
subject, and entitles to a year's study at some foreign university. Thus far
the Bryn Mawr fellowships have been held by twelve persons. Of these,
beside the five still at the college, one is associate professor of history at
Vassar, a second has a responsible place in the U. S. Bureau of Agriculture
in this city, a third holds a college position in Greek, two are continuing
their studies, the one in Nova Scotia, the other at the University of Zurich,
two are teaching in normal schools.
The fellowship of Wesleyan University is awarded to that member of its
senior class who shall pass the best examination in Greek.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers five graduate scholar-
ships which are in effect fellowships.
Although Johns Hopkins University does not commonly open its doors
to women, it has done so on one occasion. Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin
was invited by the trustees for three years (1 879-1 882) to continue her stud-
ies at the university, and was granted the regular stipendium of a Fellow.
Her specialty is mathematics.
The alumnae of Michigan University are raising a fund to establish one or
more fellowships of $8,000, which will afford each an annual income of
$400.
80 International Council of Women.
A fellowship at Michigan University is now offered by the Western Asso-
ciation of Collegiate Alumnae to that one of its members who shall present
the most satisfactory thesis before June 15, 1888, the decision to be referred
to a joint committee of the members of the faculty and of the association.
This fellowship is not restricted to a year, but is subject to the faculty's ap-
proval of work done, an arrangement which seems preferable to the one-
year system, since that hardly gives time for extended investigation, and
under the limitation, work well begun may be dropped for lack of opportu-
nity to complete it.
In Great Britain fellowships have often been conferred for life, but now a
custom of limiting them to six years is gaining favor. The benefits which
have resulted to the literary and scientific world from English fellowships will
be apparent if one will glance at the title-pages in any well-selected library and
notice how often we are indebted for the most fruitful investigations of special
subjects to the holders of fellowships.
At Newnham College, Cambridge, England, there is already one fellow-
ship tor women (called, however, a studentship), while another is about to
be endowed.
There seems, indeed, no way at present, in which the higher education of
women can be advanced so effectively" as by the founding of fellowships
for them in our colleges where none now exist, and in adding to their num-
ber where they have already been established.
Martha McLellan Brown, Vice-President Wesleyan Female
College, Cincinnati, Ohio, was then presented to the audience.
INSTITUTIVE POWER.
Mrs. Brown. I have the honor to represent the oldest chartered college for
women, the Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College. Half a century ago its
founders, under the inspiration of the honored and beloved Mrs. Mary Wilber,
led the battle and won the victory for woman's higher education. This grand
pioneer of woman's scholastic education, in founding the Wesleyan College
was just four years in advance of the honored organization which called this
eminent Council. That grand old institution has given her noble degrees to
about six hundred and fifty graduates, many of whom occupy the highest
places of usefulness and culture in the Christian world to-day, and one of
whom the citizens of Washington were delighted to honor in the person of
Mrs. Hayes, wife of ex-President Hayes.
Simultaneous with the progress of this great experiment have been the steps
of woman's advancement. It will be our province in this paper to examine
the secret springs of this progressive power. Institutive power may be defined
as that force which makes for the development, amelioration, and protection
of mankind. Statesmen may think of it as political force. Ecclesiastics
may think of it as religious force, and some philosophers may regard it sim-
ply as instinct. * * *
Education. 81
Practically, all institutions represent some sentiment or principle of their
founders. Usually they also represent a self-sacrificing activity for some
movement of greater or less importance to the general public. Whether
old or new, they are the movements of great personality in their founders.
* * * As the public, free institutions of our country represent the independ-
ent, free personality of our fore-parents of the Revolution, so all reforms
establish some eleemosynary institutions of permanent philanthropy. *•* *
Now, it is not a question in empirical sequences whether this strength of
character is greater in men or in women. The main point under review is
this, that the development of the ethical personality of women, secured by
their higher education during the last half-century, has given impetus to the
march of progress in this country unparalleled in history. All the instincts
and aspirations of cultured women hold them tenaciously to the sacred
obligations of unimpeachable right. * * * By virtue of their prime ministry
over all social interests, the world expects them to stand in the unequal battle
of life with greater independence than men. And they meet the world's
expectations ; they stand nobly, royally, at the nation's stadium for the high-
est good without money-earning stimulus, without emoluments, without per-
quisites, and they are, therefore, more frequently institutive factors in the
reforms of the civilized world. * * * Great numbers of educated American
women stand committed to such reforms as may not only abate the evils and
wrongs of society, but elevate the people to a sense of public responsibility
or rectitude. * * * They stand heroically demanding justice, morality, free-
dom, and character. They seek to elevate the free personality of the people.
For liberty is the compass of responsibility. * * *
All actual development proceeds through the individual to general forms of
culture, as educational, political, social, religious. * * * The institutive
principle in this higher culture which reaches out for new fields of activity, the
institutive feelings which seek the broken foundations of human society every-
where for repair and improvement, are the very foundation principles of
republican government ; and, once organized in progressive institutions,
they mount and climb and aspire infinitely ; hence the rapid progress of
society. As yet only the masculine portion of this activity is organized pol-
itically. The more extensive portion is not conserved in the progressive
aims of political science. All estimates of possible attainments leave out
woman's institutive force except by co-operative influence. All questions
seek solution without reference to this institutive power ; hence many prob-
lems evade solution without this generic factor, and some great movements
limp and stagger through abnormal existence.
Humanity is not a mass of matter acted upon as such by the cosmic forces
of gravity, momentum, or electricity. It mounts by a higher impelling power
than all these physical forces. When the pendulum of human thought sweeps
the whole range of transitions from the organic force, challenging the crystal
82 International Council of Women.
to yield its dead properties to feed the living organism, up the scale of forces
to the divine conception of spiritual life in mortal man, reflecting the image
of the Eternal, this thought sweeps along the path of a law which would
unlock all the problems between — a law of superorganic force, operative in
the souls of mankind for progress upward, above the last analysis of sensation.
Not like pulses beating in upon consciousness from an upper and outer
world — a lex ex machina. Rather it is a throbbing force within the con-
sciousness— absolute per se, free, independent and vital by virtue of the
creative energy which breathed it into the dead form of humanity. Matter
is inert. Whenever matter is moved from a center there is life. This force
at the center of human consciousness is more than energy. It is unique.
Its command of the periphery is absolute. It knows no sex. It acknowl-
edges no individual ambitions, nor even the gravity of social organisms that
are destructive. It epitomizes the world of matter and the world of mind.
Clearing the environments for the psychic lenses which may add new stars to
the old "pathway of the gods" — new divinity in human form, new Christ-
liness in human character — still it mounts.
Thus closed the able discussion on the various questions of
education. To test the feelings of the audience, a resolution
was offered and unanimously passed, in favor of opening all
the colleges and universities of the country freely to the
daughters of the State.
Many who had not given much thought to the subject were
surprised to learn that so prolonged a struggle had been made
by women themselves to secure a foothold, even in those insti-
tutions endowed by the State, which women, as well as men,
are taxed to support.
The facts presented on this topic roused many to new
thought and stirred all to fresh indignation against the injustice
that compels one-half the race to a hard struggle for those
rights freely accorded the other. With the passing of the res-
olution, the interesting sessions of the first day ended.
TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 1888.
MORNING SESSION.
PHILANTHROPIES.
Harriette R. Shattuck, President of the National Woman
Suffrage Association for Massachusetts, presided. Invocation
by Zerelda G. Wallace.
Mrs. Shattuck. Before we join in singing the sixteenth song I will ask
its author, who is with us to-day, to read it. Let me introduce Mrs. Harriet
H. Robinson, of Massachusetts, who, although not a pioneer in the move-
ment, is one of the older workers.
Mrs. Robinson read the stirring original song, " Hark the
Sound of Myriad Voices," in the singing of which the audi-
ence joined heartily.
Mrs. Shattuck. The subject for us to consider this morning is philan-
thropy. Philanthropy — what is it? We have become so familiar with the
word that we are apt to forget that it is a comparatively new one. In olden
times there was no such word, because there was no such thing as philan-
thropy, for words represent and express ideas and are coined to meet the
need which the existence of a new idea brings to the world. The nearest
approach to philanthropy in ante-Christian days was the friendship of the
Greeks; and friendship is a love between individuals, while philanthropy is
the love of the race — the stooping of the higher ddwn to the lower and the
helping that lower to arise — the stretching out of the hand and opening of
the heart to all less fortunate than ourselves.
As you know, the word comes from two Greek words meaning li to love "
and " man," and expresses the love of man or of humanity ; that brotherly
love or " charity " of the Bible, which is greater than even hope or faith ;
that love which Christ came to make manifest, and which we, by following
his example, shall manifest also.
It is quite appropriate, therefore, that the first speaker this morning
should represent an organization of women which has grown out of the need
for woman's active work in the church. I have the honor of introducing to
you Mrs. Isabel C. Barrows, delegate of the Woman's Auxiliary Conference
of the Unitarian Association.
what unitarian women are doing.
Mrs. Barrows. In preparing this outline of the missionary work of Uni-
tarian women my eye chanced to fall upon a newspaper clipping which had
84 International Council of Women.
been sent me by a friend. It is dated September, 1836, and announces a
fair for the sale of fancy and useful articles for the purpose of "raising
money to support a missionary to the West." The four ladies who sign it
were members of a Unitarian society in Massachusetts, which from that day
to this has never failed to raise its annual contribution for missionary work.
But the special point of interest in this advertisement is that over fifty years
ago women felt the duty laid upon them of raising money for philanthropic
purposes, and that the way in which they did it was by the " fair." As a
step toward dispensing with such a laborious way of winning money it is
necessary to educate the consciences of men and women to the duty of
giving to worthy philanthropic and religious objects systematically and gen-
erously. One of the purposes of the society which I am commissioned to
represent at this Council is this broader education.
If we look over the annals of the Unitarian Church we find many women
whose entire lives have been given to works of benevolence and charity.
Prior to anti-slavery times there was no one special thing that brought such
women to the front from the quiet of their homes and parishes, though the
mighty influence which they there exercised may not be measured. But
when the tide of feeling rose high against the sufferings of the slave, and later,
when the war made such demands on human sympathy, the nobleness ot the
women of all denominations was aroused, and among those doing their full
share toward the amelioration of suffering it is certainly just to count the
women of the Unitarian fold. See, again, the list of friendly visitors asso-
ciated in carrying out that wise method of dealing with the poorer classes
of our communities, known as the Organized Charities, and you will find
no mean sprinkling of names of women from Unitarian households.
But happily in these various branches of work all sects may and should
unite. To wisely educate the deaf or blind child, to generously and
judiciously administer relief to the needy, to gather together the feeble-
minded and develop the spark of intelligence which would die if left in its
natural surroundings, to rescue young girls from temptation and place them
in comfortable homes — these require no subscription to any creed, save the
all-inclusive one of love to God and love to man ; they need occasion no
sectarian rivalry, save as each should strive to be foremost in good works.
Apart from all this, however, many women with fidelity to their religious
convictions feel the need of something which shall help to spread the special
faith which they believe best suited to redeem the world. It was in accord-
ance with this desire that the various women's boards of missions sprang into
existence a few years ago. Among others, the women of the Unitarian house-
hold of faith felt this impulse, and in 1880 they made a modest attempt to
follow the excellent example set by their sisters of the orthodox churches.
In 1825 the American Unitarian Association was organized chiefly for the
purpose of printing and disseminating liberal literature, but also for the
Philanthropies. 85
building up of new or struggling churches and supporting home missionaries.
Though made up of a membership of both men and women, it was wholly
officered by men. At last one or two women were rather reluctantly admitted
to the board, but the masculine element was so predominant that the feminine
influence was hardly felt. There were many wom^n, however, who believed
that the denomination was losing much power by this practically one-sided
arrangement, and they determined to organize an auxiliary society, one
whose main object should be to develop the religious life in the individual
members, thus quickening the conscience into such vigorous life that the
secondary object, that of raising money, should be made easier, because
people readily give for that in which they heartily believe. Our conference
was therefore organized to stand beside the American Unitarian Association.
Hence our name, " The Women's Auxiliary Conference."
Our permanent organization was effected at the Saratoga National Confer-
ence, in September, 1880, with Miss Abby W. May as president, and a director
for every State in which the Unitarian churches existed. The avowed objects
as presented to the women were to enlist the sympathies and energies of
Unitarian women in the growth of the liberal faith; to strengthen and in-
crease the religious life among the members themselves; to bring them into
more friendly relation with each other, and especially with those of the same
faith, in struggling societies wherever they might be ; to awaken an interest
in missionary work, and in the circulation of liberal literature, and, lastly,
to raise money for the general objects recommended by the National Con-
ference of Unitarian Churches.
Branch conferences, closely united with the parent society, and paying
their membership fees into its treasury, have been formed in a large number
of parishes. In these branches there are classes of religious study and dis-
cussion made up entirely of women.
Our branches now reach from Maine to California, and from the North to
the Sunny South, wherever we have Unitarian churches, though there is a
sister organization comprising the central Western States, known as '•' The
Women's Western Unitarian Conference," that shares the national field
with us. If we were asked to point out the most distinctive feature of our
undertakings we should unhesitatingly say that the " Post-office Mission " is
the most unique and perhaps the most effective thing connected with the
Conference. It occupies a large share of the efforts and strength of our
Conference and yearly tens of thousands of tracts, pamphlets, sermons, and
papers are distributed over the whole country. The method has this advan-
tage over the system followed by the older churches, that reading matter is
sent only to those who take the trouble to ask for it and pay for its trans-
mission.
In supporting missionaries, in helping to house new societies, and in all
work of that kind the Conference has done its fair share, and is doing more
86 International Council of Women.
each \ear as its coffers are better filled. Of foreign missionary work, that
which chiefly absorbs the money and strength of other women's missionary
boards, we have attempted nothing, though a few of the branches in the
West and many individual Unitarians in the East are greatly interested in
the Ramabai circles, and are contributing in an unsectarian way toward the
success of this latest effort in behalf of Hindoo women.
A new work undertaken by the Unitarian Church has been largely left for
the women, to carry on, and it enlists their hearty co-operation — the estab-
lishment and support of an industrial school among the Crow Indians of
Montana.
Another thing to which our Conference is pledged is the assistance of
women who wish to enter the ministry and who need sympathy and per-
haps material aid. The Harvard University Divinity School is closed to
women, but the Meadville Theological School throws open its doors and
welcomes them to all the advantages which are offered to men, save the
scholarships, the word "student" in the question of distributing funds being
interpreted to mean male students. Here several women have studied and
are now studying. Our Conference gladly gives the weight of its influence
and such contributions of money as may be necessary to enable as many
as possible to become preachers and pastors. Their message has been
gladly received, especially in the West, where in some parishes children
growing up under the devoted ministry of consecrated women are so
accustomed to their voices that last summer, when one of them exchanged
with a clergyman, a little fellow on going home told his mother, in great
astonishment, that " a man preached in the church." He had never heard one
before. The good tidings are as welcome from a woman's lips as man's.
There has always been the most cordial sympathy between the officers of
the American Unitarian Association and the Auxiliary Conference, and if
the time were ever to come when the board of the older organization were
to have a fair representation of women, it is not unlikely that this auxiliary
would be merged in the larger institution, and each would become auxiliary
to the other. But that day is apparently far ahead, for, with all its radical
ideas, the Unitarian body is essentially conservative in practice. Mean -
time the women will work in their own way, enlarging their own hearts and
lives, and striving, as best they may, to impart that freer, higher life to those
who hunger and thirst for it.
The paper of Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing is given here in
its appointed place.
WOMAN AS A MISSIONARY.
Woman has special aptitude for missionary work ; Christianity is based
on self-giving. To reach her best, woman has been obliged to form the
habit of self-giving. If she takes the crown of motherhood, her feet
Philanthropies. 87
must touch the River of Death, and she must let its bitter spray sprinkle her
bowed head.
She feels the poverty and pain of life when her heart-stiings are tangled
around feet that wander in sin to the world's end. By the cradle and dying
bed she learns the helplessness of human strength and the need of divine
aid. Many a woman lives, as kings are said to rule, " by the grace of God."
In the world's creed,
" Men must work and women must pray."
The old Scots, when they baptized a boy, held back his right hand that it
might be free to smite his enemies. The cry has been as in Marmion :
" You, with Lady Clare,
May bid your beads and patter prayer ;
I gallop to the host."
Piety has been expected of woman. Many a man, himself no saint, has
felt it a fine, safe thing to have a priestess in the house.
The Methodist, one of the largest of the Protestant denominations, has
always given to its women opportunity and scope. The real founder of the
church, Susanna Wesley, was a preacher of rare power. Dr. Adam Clark
said of her: " If the epithet were not so unusual, I should call her a very
able divine."
The first woman's missionary society was organized about a quarter of a
century ago. Now most of the denominations have their home and foreign
missionary societies. They have a contributing membership of about one
and one-half millions. They circulate about one hundred and twenty-five
thousand copies of missionary papers, besides millions of pages of leaflets.
They hold at least a half-million missionary meetings every year, presided
over by women, the addresses made and papers read by the sisterhood that
forty years ago would no sooner have thought of doing such a work than they
would of taking a journey to the moon. They raise and disburse about two
millions of money every year. Their several boards scan each little invest-
ment with as much care as if a fortune were to be made in discovering an
error in the accounts. The energy that used to be expended upon rag car-
pets and patch-work quilts, and, further back, upon spinning and tapestry,
has been turned upon the wretched huddling places of women in our own
and foreign lands, and millions upon millions have been helped to a better
life. The reflex influence of all this work has been measureless. Women
have learned their own ability, and they have convinced their brothers that
they can be trusted with heavy financial interests. They have seen that the
heathenish notions that cramp the feet in China and the brain in India have
cast their shadow even over Christian lands. They have learned that the
safety of the home, their stronghold, depends upon the permanence of the
marriage tie, and the permanence of the marriage tie depends upon the dig-
nity of women and the purity of men. Men as well as women must be like
Caesar's wife, above suspicion. Women must demand honor for honor, in-
88 International Council of Women. '
tegrity for integrity, and purity for purity, that the home may rest upon the
corner-stone of Christian and mutual respect and love. They have seen in
their own land the ripened fruit of the careless sowing of women who are at
ease in Zion.
The work has given intellectual stimulus. It has shown women their
indebtedness to Jesus, the son of Mary, the great leveler, the best friend
they ever had or ever will have, and that safety and success depend upon
their loyalty to His love. * # *
Mrs. Shattuck. I now have the pleasure of introducing the delegate of
the Western Women's Unitarian Conference, Victoria M. Richardson.
Mrs. Richardson. Outside our General Western Conference, woman's
right to active participation in all the debates had never been questioned.
Women asked why the Woman's Conference was organized when the Gen-
eral Conference put women upon its board and its programmes and ordained
them as its ministers? At first it was hard to get any one to speak. The
first year of our existence, at our annual meeting, we had two hours assigned
to us. We had much difficulty in finding enough women to fill that time,
and were compelled to call to our assistance some of the brethren who
favored our movement. In our last annual meeting our programme was so
crowded we were compelled to enforce strictly the time rule, and women's
hearts burned because they could not report what had been done in their
personal field — for our territory extends from Western New York to Dakota,
and from the sunny fields of Kentucky to Colorado. An army of busy sec-
retaries and State directors has developed the post-office mission work. I
think eight years ago we had two ordained women ministers in this great
Western field. To-day the State of Iowa alone has five earnest, noble women,
making themselves felt, not only in the religious world, but in all good works
for the help and development of woman.
Ky their works ye shall know them, and the Woman's Western Conference
feels that the eager seekers for truth and light on the lone prairies and the
frozen plains of Dakota have been cheered and helped by the inspiration of
the literature that has been carried to them by the post-office mission. We
care not so much to send our own religious thought, but the general utter-
ances of all noble souls, irrespective of theological differences, believing
that the best Unitarianism is that which ministers to needy souls, and we dis-
tribute to our thousands of interested readers any literature that teaches love
to God and love to man.
Mrs. Shattuck. The next speaker is the delegate and President of the
Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic. I introduce to you Mrs. Laura
McNeir.
Mrs. McNeir. I have the honor to represent the mothers, wives, sisters,
and daughters of our American heroes, and in explaining my position
Philanthropies. 89
would say to the ladies on the stage that thus far our hands have been so full/'
of supplying the needs of the body that perhaps we have not yet reached
the point of woman suffrage. Therefore, if my remarks are not particularly
upon that subject I hope it will be understood. * * *
Standing at the head of an organization, in which various classes and con-
ditions are represented, we have felt that among its many objects the one
which aims to teach woman the worth of true dignity, that endeavors to
rouse her to a sense of her power and a right application of that power,
is indeed the object pre-eminent. For though it is but human to enlist
sympathy, when such is needed for the distressed of our country's defenders,
when, after awhile, it becomes a pleasant duty to implant seeds of
patriotism in the bosoms of our young men and maidens ; though it is
inspiring to lay fresh laurels upon the brows of heroes whose brave deeds
grow brighter with each year's telling ; though it is " sorrowing with'sorrow "
to mingle our tears with tears of mothers and wives whose lives have been
saddened by war's cruel hand, yet the efforts made to awaken and train
aright woman's influence is a work so ennobling, so sublimating, that it
becomes the pivot upon which every other aim of the order revolves. If it
be part of our creed to uphold honor and manliness in man, it is the whole
law to keep the value and power of womanhood ever in sight. We have
learned through the bitterness of past days that when the stars of America's
flag were dimmed by treason's stain, and when her great body poured out its
loyal blood to restore their brightness, it was woman's touch that staunched
the wound and woman's love that soothed the pain. For, as it is man's
prerogative to strike the blow, it is woman's privilege to bring the healing ;
and which is the greater power, the might to wound or the right to heal ?
* * *
With such a power, shall we not use it for the best ? Will we permit it
to lie unconscious, unappreciated ? Will we waste time in sighing for man's
privileges or imitating man's strength? What counts his strength if. after
all, we bend it to our will, even if it be in our own way? What are his
privileges compared to woman's influence and its fruits, which began at cre-
ation and will last forever, which is as broad as heaven and as vast as eter-
nity ?
The Chairman. There is probably no branch of woman's work that
is so universal in its nature as philanthropy. Long before women were
educated to any extent or before they were allowed to enter the industries
they were taking part in helping mankind. It would therefore be impossi-
ble to represent philanthropy without calling upon other countries than
our own. We are happy this morning in having here a representative
of France, our sister republic, the land which is striving for that for which
we are striving, a perfect democracy and perfect equality. The represent-
ative from France, Madame Isabelle Bogelot, is to speak on the Prison
7
90 International Council of Women.
Reform Work of St. Lazare, Paris. Many of us probably are not able to
understand French, but I know we are able to feel the beauty and the grace
of the French tongue.
Madame Bogelot, delegate of the Prison Work of the Liber-
ated of St. Lazare, Paris, delivered her address in French.
The following is the translation:
Madame Bogelot. Those whose names have more authority than mine
in art, science, politics and philosophy should have represented France at
this Congress. They are Maria Deraismes, Leon Richer, and Hubertine
Auclert, who'are especially interested in woman suffrage and the vindication
of the political and social rights of women.
There is Emily de Morsier, who is vice-president of our Society of Pris-
ons. Hers is a generous heart which struggles for the amelioration of
woman's fate and the overthrow of prejudice. She desires equal rights for
both sexes, and takes part in all the humanitarian and progressive societies.
She desires arbitration always ; no more wars between nations. She has
studied the origin of religions, and finds in each an ideal of justice which
must be the guide of life. In education, we have Caroline de Barrau, who
devotes herself especially to the reform of the University curriculum, and
claims equal education for the two sexes* and equal opportunities in political
and social life. She is a brave woman, both in heart and mind.
You see, ladies and gentlemen, my country was capable of coming among
you. Philanthropy is here specially represented by myself, but I am charged
to assure you of the sympathy and the loyalty of our countrywomen named
above. I have crossed the ocean in order to join you. I am well recom-
pensed for it. My eyes are dazzled by the spectacle of this reunion. My
ears, to which your language is unfamiliar, can yet frequently comprehend,
thanks to the clearness of your discourses. You have deeply moved my
heart by your delicacy and consideration for me. Many among you will
remember that you have had French ancestors, and that France gave her
blood to America to aid in the conquest of independence and liberty. In
me you entertain the nation I represent, and you treat me as a sister. I am
grateful to you for it. Permit me to give you some details concerning the
work of reform which I direct in Paris. This society takes its name from
the Prison of St. Lazare, the only house of detention for the women of
Paris. Its motto is: "Lift up the woman who is in danger of ruin, and
furnish to the saved one, without distinction of race or nationality, the
means of re-establishing herself." The work is to aid woman in every epoch
of her life. It undertakes the salvation of young girls who are confided to
it, and protects the infants whenever it has the opportunity to do so. I
desire especially to limit this article to the fate of the female prisoners, but
it is impossible to explain the ultimate aim of our society without presenting
a few considerations of a general character.
Philanthropies. 91
If the fate of the female prisoner saddens and attracts us in spite of the
faults she has committed, if we entertain for her sentiments of pity and
indulgence, it is because our conscience cries that this woman has rights and
that we owe a duty to her. The more the patroness enters into intimate
acquaintance with the prisoner, the more she discovers the responsibility of
society, which has been unjust toward woman — always sacrificed to man,
brought up in inferior moral and intellectual conditions — which excuses- his
faults and diminishes, even to forgetfulness, her personality. The evil is a
grave one ; it has deep roots, but it is not without remedy ; it is sufficient
for us who gauge it that we wish to cure it, in order to diminish and perhaps
to destroy it entirely. We must fight, hand to hand, all prejudices, all
injustice, and, as I said in a report presented to our society in 1886 : " The
social problems would not be difficult to solve if we applied always and
everywhere principles of justice, of morality, and of fraternity."
Conferences, congresses bring together and unite ; they stimulate the
desire to do better ; they instruct by exchange of ideas ; they throw light on
points hitherto obscure and ignored. The success of the cause of woman
will be the recompense of these reunions, composed of those who are sincere
in their convictions. The female prisoner is a social wound, and the prisons
are the places where the evil is propagated and aggravated. We must, at all
hazards, prevent human beings from entering the prison, and when mis-
fortune has put them there it is our duty to attempt the impossible, as it
were, in order to sweeten their captivity and to give them a distaste for that
sort of existence. Such is the end which the work of the Liberated of St.
Lazare desires to attain. It knows the female prisoner in the prison, and is
employed in preparing for her return to the world. The immediate aid con-
sists in the visits which the benefactresses make during the detention of the
prisoner ; it is a role of consolation, comfort, and hope for her. This is the
period of study for the visiting lady ; she observes thus the character of the
condemned, who appeals to her voluntarily. The work of the Liberated
continues its beneficent action in giving some small aid in the way of money on
the day of liberation ; but this method of help should be exceptional.
The Society has, in addition, two modest asylums which receive temporarily
the discharged who has no family or who is not reconciled with her family on
the day of her discharge. In these asylums the liberated ones are affection-
ately counseled by guardians. They seek to stimulate their energy by awak-
ening in them will power, a plan so warmly advocated byMme. Concepcion
Arenal in her report presented to the Congress Penitentiare of Rome, in
December, 1885. In order to lift up the discharged woman it is necessary
that she should desire it ; and, in order that She should desire it, it is neces-
sary that she should be able to will it. Thus the effort of her will is aided in
pointing out to her the establishments where she has some opportunity of
finding for herself work — where she may debate concerning the conditions
92 International Council of Women.
and the price. She must have the responsibility of her regained liberty.
It is only in this way that one can hope for a complete cure. The freed one
must realize that she is her own mistress, and she must be led to solicit for
herself our support and our aid. This manner of action offers some chance
of success, but it demands much work from those who make the trial. The
female prisoner is the result of a social condition. She is a fallen and help-
less woman. She has but little power of resistance, and in order to conduct
herself rightly none can ignore the fact that she must resist with perseverance.
Injustice and immorality always weigh heavily on her ; her judgment is dis-
torted ; everything urges her on to rebellion and hatred, and her sojourn in
prison only aggravates this wicked disposition. Injustice displaced woman ;
justice alone can give back to her the place to which she has a right.
How many heartaches does one experience in visits to the prison ! What
souvenirs rest in the grave of memory! One can not refrain from ardently
desiring those reforms which shall give back to woman confidence in herself.
Many poor creatures go out from prison only to return there very quickly,
because they have no force to struggle for life and to provide for their needs.
And the children, who are with their mothers, unmindful of that horrible place
in which they are shut up, but which they will remember later if they live,-
for they are deformed, diseased, and death watches for them ! The prison
will kill them. They entered there in a dying condition, and the lack of
pure air will accomplish their death.
The Work of the Liberated of St. Lazare always interests itself in woman.
It aids her during pregnancy ; brings her help at the time of the birth of
her baby ; sustains the girl-mother ; stands to her in the place of family ;
receives often the abandoned or maltreated child ; seeks honest employers
where the little one may be placed in apprenticeship in order to give her
means of living and to save her from passing through the prison as her
mother has done ; pays arrearages ; gives little certificates of rent ; reclaims
articles from the pawnbroker ; indemnifies employers in order to regain pos-
session of the trunk which is the only fortune of a nurse who has been con-
victed of her first larceny. The society seeks still (and it is one of its
triumphs) to mollify the complainants; if the cause of complaint is slight
it obtains a stay of proceedings and carries it to the judge, who yields and
dismisses the unfortunate with an order of nolle prosequi. By this means
the first condemnation and its sad consequences are avoided. The society
restores to their homes, whenever it is possible, the children who have left
the paternal fireside. It brings back into favor the girl-mothers driven from
the family, and causes the grandparents to adopt the infants.
Read the reports of our society, which has been laboring regularly and
progressing step by step for nineteen years. Come and pay a visit to our
bureau. You will go away convinced that the work of the Liberated of St.
Lazare renders great services, that it merits sympathy and the encouragement
Philanthropies. 93
of all those who are interested in philanthropy, and that it is well worthy of
a place in the Revue du Progressive Morale.
If man, after having committed a fault and having been punished for
it, experiences, on his discharge from prison, great difficulty in regaining
his place in society, the woman who finds herself in the same situation has
such great impediments that it amounts almost to an impossibility for her to
rise again. It seems that the world exacts from woman, although less pro-
tected than man, perfect freedom from sin, and refuses to receive her again
after a fall or an error. This one shocking iniquity is prevalent in nearly
every country. In Paris, it is increased by the state of the prison of St.
Lazare, the only one which receives women ; gathers between the same walls
young girls under paternal correction, the accused, the condemned and
the prostitute. The result is that the public confounds the women who
come from the St. Lazare with prostitutes, surrounds them with the same scorn,
and finds in that a convenient excuse for refusing to aid them. The unhappy
prisoners themselves feel so deeply the horror of this situation that they
dread the prison less than the hour when they regain the liberty which will
force them to face the general scorn and the difficulties of existence which
they foresee to be insurmountable. It is the deep pity for the being who
prefers perchance imprisonment to liberty, and even dreads the latter as a
worse penance than the prison itself, which has given birth to the work of
the Liberated of St. Lazare. To preserve the woman in danger of being
lost, and furnish to the liberated, without distinction of religion or nation-
ality, the means of rising again ; such is the programme of the work.
The directress-general, to whom the administration has granted entrance
into the prison, goes there once or several times every week. She sees the
prisoners, encourages them, consoles them and informs herself as to their
needs for the day of their discharge. One, coming from the country in
order to go into service in the city, commits there some fault, and,
wakened from her delusions, wishes to return to her family, who repulse
her. The directress then writes to the parents in order to prevail on them
to yield; to the pastor or the mayor, interceding for her protege. They offer
to pay for the guilty child, and success is often the result. Above all, they
give clothes, destined to replace the prison garments in which the liberated
would find herself at once repulsed. Sometimes a little money is given, as
little as possible, the money of charity profiting rarely if one can not watch
strictly over its manner of being spent. Generally, the directress can, it
may be personally, it may be with the aid of the lady patronesses, take
measures in time, so that the aid desired may be ready at the hour of dis-
charge from the prison. It is important, in fact, not to leave the aban-
doned ones to themselves a day, even an hour ; those unfortunates, who,
robbed of their innocence, would be immediately a sure prey for which crime
and debauch are watching. But, in spite of the good-will which is displayed
94 International Council of Women.
there, it sometimes happens that one can not succeed in giving the promised
aid until after the discharge from the prison.
In order to remedy this grave inconvenience, Madame Bogelot, some years
ago, prevailed on the society to adopt a plan which she submitted to it, of
creating for these special cases temporary asylums of a very simple kind.
There were hired at Billancourt first one, then two, little pavilions, where,
under the guardianship of a working woman, an honest housekeeper, there
were received some of the discharged or their children into each asylum
during the days of necessary delay. In that little retreat, modest and full of
industry, often like the one which they had had and should have preserved,
the liberated women live in a sort of moral convalescence, where their energy
regains strength, an energy which has been depressed or which has disap-
peared, it may be through their fault, it may be for lack of education or their
sojourn in prison. No rule of labor is imposed on the women ; they are
only asked to share in the household work until the day when, with the aid
of the work, they shall be placed anew in employment corresponding with
their capabilities. They find again in those kindly homes the necessary
strength for taking up again the interrupted current of a regular and honest
life. The work counts nearly twenty years of existence. It has already done
much good, and can not fail to do more, when St. Lazare, being discon-
tinued as the only prison for women, the great social iniquity shall have
disappeared. St. Lazare having ceased (it is promised, at least) to receive
the mixture of prostitutes and prisoners, in order to keep only prostitutes,
the work which bears its name will be necessarily obliged to modify its title ;
but the need of giving aid to the liberated continuing, it will persevere under
a new title in fulfilling, as in the past, the mission which has been self-
appointed.
If one considers the sum of money expended each year by the work, less
than 15,000 francs, it is astonishing that one can do so much with such fee-
ble means. But let it not be forgotten that the object of the work is less to
distribute charity than to seek, by counsel, by journeys, by personal exer-
tions-, to place the liberated women on the good road of honesty, work, and
duty. In acting as it has done, the Association for the Liberated Women of
St. Lazare considers that, in the limit of its means and in the specialty which
it has chosen, it works not uselessly in the general cause of the rights of
woman, and that it is in complete union of sentiment with all the members
of the Council, who claim for woman, in the name of progress, of justice,
and of humanity, the title of companion and equal of man.
In closing, I thank you for your kind attention. I will not say good-bye
to you. My country is very far from yours, but we will not forget each
other. We have shared the same life and the same works, and our hand-
claspings have confirmed the sentiments of our hearts.
Philanthropies. 95
Mrs. Shattuck. The next phase of philanthropy is that of hospital work,
and our representative here to-day who will speak on that subject is Mrs.
Ednah D. Cheney, of Boston, the President and Delegate of the New
England Hospital for Women and Children, whom I have now the great
honor of introducing to you.
HOSPITALS MANAGED BY AND FOR WOMEN.
Mrs. Cheney. In the whole department of education in its relation to
practical industry, the most important point to be enforced is thorough train-
ing with reference to the special work to be done. Women have been and
still are placed at great disadvantage in this respect as compared with men,
mainly from three causes. The first is the want of pecuniary means, which
often renders it difficult or impossible for a woman to give years to unremuner-
ative study. The second is the lack of a definite purpose in life, adopted
at an early age and steadily pursued, which comes from the common Ameri-
can idea that women should not look upon self-support as a natural duty.
The third reason is that women are deluded, by the idea of some royal road
to knowledge by a quick process of intuition, by which they may gain what
o'hers have won through slow, patient study. In the profession of medi-
cine this last position is quite untenable. The experience of the last thirty
years confirms this truth. * * *
When Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell returned from Europe she saw the necessity
of providing practical study for women. She appealed to friends for help,
and was thus enabled to open a small dispensary. In 1852 a charter was
obtained to establish "The New York Infirmary for Women and Children."
Dr. Emily Blackwell had already gone to Europe for her clinical study.
In 1855 Dr. Marie E. Zakrzewska, who had had much hospital experience
in her own city of Berlin, Germany, and had received her degree in Cleve-
land, Ohio, joined the Doctors Blackwell in New York. The need of clini-
cal instruction became constantly more evident as every year more women
graduated from the two medical schools, and the magnificent hospitals of
Philadelphia and Boston as well as of New York still refused them admission.
Finding that a new impulse must be given to the work, the young German
woman, Dr. Zakrzewska offered to visit the two cities having medical schools
to plead for the completion of the education of medical graduates, and to
ask for money to establish the hospital, for which a charter was already
obtained. Boston was selected as the first place to visit, and thus began the
work which I have the honor to represent to you. Dr. Zakrzewska pleaded
the necessity of her work so strongly that the women of Boston became
interested, and promised assistance so far as to subscribe, for three years,
half of the rent needed to hire a building in which the first hospital where
women might practice their profession and teach it to others could be
opened. In Philadelphia her pleading had a different effect. The enlight-
96 International Council of Women.
ened friends who supported the Medical College for Women were convinced
that if a hospital was needed for such purpose in New York it was equally-
needed in Philadelphia, and the government of the college at once began to
agitate the subject of clinical instruction, although the hospital]was not estab-
lished until three years after the successful existence of the New York
Infirmary. * * *
But the value of the work was so fully understood by the friends of women's
medical education that when Dr. Zakrzewska resigned her position as pro-
fessor of obstetrics in the clinical department of one of the^colleges, she
was at once requested to join in establishing the New England^Hospital for
Women and Children, which was opened in June, 1862. The great pur-
pose was to give to graduated women the chance of studying and practicing
their profession, after acquiring theoretic knowledge, by giving them admis-
sion to the hospitals as internes. Our hospital thus differs from those of the
New York and Philadelphia Colleges in not being connected with any school,
but receiving graduates of recognized colleges admitting women. * * *■
The trained nurse is recognized as the physician's needed helper. From
the original object of educating women at once resulted the great charity
of affording to women the professional care of their own sex. Num-
bers of women have suffered for years from unwillingness to apply to men,
and it is conclusively proved that confidence in the care of her own sex is
confined to no class of women, but is shared alike by rich and poor, learned
and ignorant, native and foreign.
We have six or occasionally seven matrons connected with our hospital,
four or five of them residing in the hospital and two or three in the dispen-
sary building. They are all graduates of some recognized medical college,
Philadelphia, New York, and Michigan University furnishing the largest
number. We have received students from England and Scotland, and even
one from India, a graduate of the Philadelphia college.
One of the most important parts of hospital experience to the interne is-
the midwifery department, a branch of practice in which the fitness of women
is most readily recognized. It is acknowledged that greater advantages of
study can be given to women in these hospitals than are open even to men
in any other way. We recognize fully the rights of every human being, and
are careful of the feelings of even the fallen women ; but, almost unconsci-
ously to herself, she may be made the subject of scientific observation and
study, which is but a righteous return for the shelter, food, and care which
is supplied to her.
Dr. Zakrzewska says :
"Remarkable success has been attained in the surgical department, which is of
the utmost importance, especially in gynaecological cases. The greatest of abdomi-
nal operations are now performed by one woman connected with the hospital, and
the percentage of recovery is equal to that of other good hospitals here or in
Europe."
Philanthropies. 97
I have a list of the following hospitals, similar to our own in aim and man-
agement: New York Infirmary, 1857; Woman's Hospital, Philadelphia;
New England Hospital for Women and Children, Boston, 1862; Chicago
Hospital for Women and Children ; Pacific Dispensary and Hospital for
Women and Children, San Francisco; Ohio Hospital, Cincinnati; North-
western Hospital, Minneapolis. I think we can truly claim that all these
institutions in our own country owe the inspiration of their establishment to
the three pioneers of whom I have spoken. They are all conducted on sim-
ilar plans, and have achieved similar results. The hospital in Chicago, like
other prominent children of the East transplanted to the West, has out-
grown its parents, and is now the largest institution of this kind in this coun-
try, and probably in the world. It has eighty beds.
While writing these notes a letter came tome from a city in Illinois, asking
for advice and encouragement in starting a hospital in that place by the
Woman's Club, numbering eighty women. The Ohio Hospital for Women
and Children, at Cincinnati, established in 1862, is still small, reporting only
sixty patients in the year. Its managers are full of hope and courage. Its
general management is similar to that of others I have named, but the treat-
ment is exclusively homoeopathic. The Massachusetts Homoeopathic Hospital
is connected with the Medical College of Boston University. The funds of
the old Female Medical College of Boston were transferred to this school,
and it admits women as students and professors. Its hospital is open to
women as internes.
The recognition of the need of clinical instruction for women has led to the
establishment of similar hospitals in Great Britain. Dr. Sophia Jex Blake,
who received her inspiration and desire to study medicine at the New England
Hospital, from Dr. Lucy Sewall, whose student she became, states that
clinical study is required in the University of London and the Royal Uni-
versity of Ireland, the only general medical colleges yet open to women in
Great Britain. This instruction is supplied by four hospitals in London,
operated wholly or in part by medical women ; by one hospital and two dis-
pensaries in Edinburgh, two hospitals in Birmingham, and one in Manches-
ter. The female medical schools in each case have a hospital attached to the
school.
In Berlin, Germany, a dispensary and small hospital has been in operation
for ten years, under the care of Dr. Franziska Tiburtius. But the work
begun in our land has spread even more widely. Three hospitals are estab-
lished in India: Kama Hospital, Bombay; Lady Dufferin's Dispensary,
Calcutta ; Maternity Hospital, at Lahore. Dr. Charlotte Ellaby, who, in
conjunction with Dr. Edith Pechy, has been doing such excellent work at the
Kama Hospital, has left for Hyderabad Sum, where the municipality is about
to open a Woman's Dispensary.
While I earnestly desire the opening of all medical colleges as of other
98 International Council of Women.
educational institutions to both sexes, and hope that women will be admitted
to share in the clinical advantages of large general hospitals, I yet believe
that the smaller hospital, mainly officered by women, and specially for the
treatment of women, and their clinical instruction of students, will yet for
a long time, and perhaps always, be of great importance, and I certainly
think that at present no single practical agency is doing more for the educa-
tion, elevation and welfare of women.
These hospitals also create and maintain an esprit de corps among women
in the profession, since all those connected with them continue to feel an
interest in them and in each other, and thus the isolation of the practitioner
is relieved, and the advancement of one is for the benefit of all.
The next address was by Miss Harriet N. Morris, who is the
delegate representing the public-school work of women. Her
subject was
MISSIONARY WORK.
Miss Morris. * * * Dr. Peabody, in an article in the Forum, entitled
"Books which have Helped Me," pays grateful tribute to Webster's old
"Elementary Spelling-Book," for having given to him in childhood that
which had been to him of great value, in after-years, as a teacher and
preacher — " No man can put off the law ot God." Again and again he had
found himself expressing the thought in varied language, in his lessons with
young men as well as in the more studied discourse of the pulpit. The old
lexicographer might have arranged his " words of one syllable" in a vertical
column — an arrangement most agreeable to some teachers — but the loss to
Dr. Peabody and his pupils no one could measure. Man does not live by
bread alone.
Let me farther speak of the spelling-book as furnishing words which are
seed-thoughts, or weapons, or torch-bearers — for they are any or all of these
in the hands of the trained Christian teacher. The history of the little word
idiot will serve the purpose to illustrate what I mean. As you know, it meant
originally, among the Greeks, simply one who had no voice in the govern-
ment. To-day such a definition would not be acceptable, since it would fire
to resentment any chivalrous boy if applied to his mother. His mother is
not the inferior of his father in his eyes ! If the Greeks called one who
could not vote an idiot, what should we call one who can vote and yet does
not? Is a privilege ever a duty? Has one a right to ignore a duty?
These questions pave the way for the study of the word scoundrel, which,
the philologist tells us, meant originally simply one who absconds at muster-
roll — one absent when he should have been present. Has any American
citizen a right to abscond on election day?
Indifference is as unworthy as fear. In no unmistakable terms, God has
given (Rev. III., 16) his estimate of the man who is lukewarm, caring not to
take the trouble to show on which side he is to be found in the great battle
Philanthropies. 99
between right and wrong. In the days of Homer, to be heroic was to be
godlike, Kingsley tells us that " among the Homeric Greeks a hero or
heroine was a man or woman who was like the gods [helpful], and who, from
that likeness, stood superior to his or her fellow-creatures. They were sup-
posed to be in some way or other partakers of the divine nature — akin to
the gods. The hero, by virtue of his kindred with the gods, was always
expected to be better than common men. He ought to have — to be true to
his name of hero he must have — justice, self-restraint, and that highest form
of modesty for which we have, alas ! no name in our English tongue — that
perfect respect for the feelings of others which springs from perfect self-
respect. If a kinsman of the gods, he must fight on their side against the
side of all wrong."
I have shown, or rather suggested, some ways in which the study of words
may serve our "mission high " in the class-room. In this study of words
there is the widest opportunity. Now and then comes the occasion for a
rejuvenating laugh. An associate teacher came to my room one day with
beaming face and said, " Here is something you will enjoy." She had
brought a boy's written work in spelling. The class had been given the word
oblate to spell and define, after which it must be put into a sentence to show
whether he had apprehended its " true meaning," as Kingsley would say.
In Wallace P 's book was found, "John was oblate on election day."
With soberest protest the boy maintained his position when questioned by
his teacher. " Did not oblate mean ' flattened at the poles ?' " " Did not
flattened at the poles mean knocked down on election day?" Therefore
" John " — his John — " was oblate on election day !" His logic was irresist-
ible, and so was our laughter, and we count our vocabulary richer for this
new rendering of an c/ld word.
In our eagerness for the mastery of the text-book we sometimes forget
that this acquisition is only a means to an end ; that the real work of the
teacher is to help the boy to become a manly man and the girl a womanly
woman — not so eager to get gold as to know God and to serve him best
through service to others. With this purpose planted in her heart, nothing
will escape the quick eye of the alert teacher. The book, the periodical,
the daily paper, the chat with a friend, the still, small voice within, the
silent hour alone with nature — all are fruitful for her purpose.
The teacher is a citizen-maker, and as such should have an interest in all
the vital questions of the day. Such teaching is missionary work. It is not
easy, but it is possible. Mrs. Browning sings :
What are we sent to earth for ? Say, to toil ;
Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines,
For all the heat o' the day till it declines,
And death's mild curfew shall from work assoil.
God did anoint thee with his odorous oil,
To wrestle, not to reign ; and he assigns
All thy tears, like pure crystallines,
100 International Council of Women.
For younger fellow-workers of the soil
To wear for amulets. So others shall
Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand.
From thy hand, and thy heart, and thy brave cheer,
And God's grace fructify through thee to all.
The least flower, with a brimming cup, may stand,
And share its dew-drop with another near.
Mrs. Shattuck. I have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Amelia S. Quin-
ton, Delegate and President of the Woman's National Indian Association.
THE WORK AND OBJECTS OF THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL INDIAN ASSOCIATION.
Mrs. Quinton. Every society earnestly covets for its work a hearing in
influential centers, and every organization represented on to-day's programme
is, therefore, to be congratulated. We are met under the auspices of a Soci-
ety possessing great intellectual power and moral force, and with a wide and
influential constituency throughout the country, and its motto, variously
phrased, may be said to be " Break every evil yoke, set free the prisoners
unjustly held, and direct to right ends their best abilities." The members
of this association have long and devotedly labored for legally-oppressed
women. To these and to all in any way associated I plead for a race of
native American women, who, whatever their ability, have no voice in the
governments over them, and no legal control of their property and children.
We of the white race have many and great privileges, many and great pro-
tections, much light and generations of growth in culture and faith. Our
Indian sisters, with few exceptions, have no protected rights to these, and
their poverty and weakness should be our appeal for them, and command at
least a share of our labors till they have what we possess. * * * When
the work of the Women's National Indian Association opened, in the spring
of 1879, it found many tribes still in utter savagery; as for example, the 600
Hualapais of Arizona, who for six months at one time, it was officially
reported, subsisted on grasshoppers and grass seeds, having only a sand-bar-
ren for a reservation, no homes, no property, no clothing even, worth the
mention ; it found the 5,000 Apaches of that Territory warlike, revengeful,
and often stung almost to madness by fraud, falsehood and famine. It
found others, as the 17,000 Navajos, a pastoral people, independent, self-
supporting, but with a wild, Arab sort of civilization; it found the Pueblo
Indians in stone houses and with but a half Spanish civilization ; it found
the red men of the plains nomad paupers and beggars; it found the tribes of
the Pacific, Montana, and the great Northwest largely savage, though some
had begun agriculture and other civilized pursuits ; it found a few of the
40,000 Sioux well advanced, and many others making a feeble beginning of
civilization. The new work found all these, and others, possessed of all the
usual human attributes and doing just as other races have done, and as our
own race has done in like case, and in nowise worse than others in such cir-
cumstances, and furnishing ample demonstration that men in all the tribes
were ready to labor when assured of the products of their toil, the industrial
statistics being favorable for those in their situation. * * *
Philanthropies. 101
Thirty-three States are represented in the Association, and about one hun-
dred societies in all have been organized. Great changes in popular senti-
ment have followed, and, as always, the governmental policy has expressed
these changes. All now concede that civilization, education, citizenship,
and Christianity can alone solve the Indian problem, and that these are solv-
ing it, there is overwhelming demonstration in all sections.
And now let me include in one statement the objects of the work so briefly
outlined in this paper. The Association proposes to labor unremittingly to
secure the reign of law and the payment of our national debts to these
natives, and the removal from the path of the Indian women the legal obsta-
cles which prevent their fulfilling the responsibilities laid upon them by the
Creator in his gifts consecrated to the utmost use of all their powers for
themselves, for their children and their race. The obstacle of ignorance
now barring their development must first of all be removed, and this means
to every good woman in our land the duty of cancelling the obligations of
centuries to these native peoples by sending to them able, patient and loving
instructors of home duties and industries; by giving them sanitary knowl-
edge and the free use of books. The call, then, to the earnest women gathered
here to-day is to share the vast practical labor imperatively and instantly
needed among Indians, to help provide the means with which to do this
work, and for volunteers to enter the waiting fields of heathenism, and
darkness among our own native Americans. * * * For this work the
Woman's National Indian Association implores the aid of all who are
devoted to the emancipation of the race from any thraldom, social, civil
or political, and to the elevation of women above all disabilities.
Mrs. Shattuck. I^fore introducing Clara Barton, and at her request,
we are to have a five minutes' talk from another lady, a representative of the
Grand Army of the Republic, Mrs. E. Florence Barker.
THE WOMAN'S RELIEF CORPS.
Mrs. Barker. Mrs. President and Ladies and Gentlemen : It is very
embarrassing to me to appear before an audience on borrowed time, but I am
fortunate in finding in this District of Columbia a woman who has time to
let ; and this is because she is the busiest woman in the United States.
The Relief Corps dates its birth from the hour the news flashed along the
wires, "Fort Sumter fired upon; our stars and stripes lowered;" as
with one great throb of the nation's heart every man, woman, and child
sprang to arms to hurl back the foe we had nurtured at our very hearth-
stones. Who of us will ever forget that Sabbath, July 21, 1861, when in
silent New England the church bells called to prayer but also to work, the
women of this land ? Ere the setting of the sun supplies were forwarded
to the hospitals ?
In 1878, Gen. Horace Binny Sargent, Commander Department of Massa-
chusetts, was influenced by James F. Marsh, assistant-adjutant general of
102 International Council of Women.
the department, who fully recognized the grand work accomplished by the
women of Massachusetts, to issue a call for a convention. Securing the co-
operation of the ladies of Fitchburg, Mass., an invitation was issued to every
auxiliary in the State to be present at a convention to be held at the above-
named place. There was organized the first department of the Woman's
Relief Corps, with Sarah E. Fuller, of Boston, the first president W. R. C.
At the fifteenth encampment, held at Indianapolis, 1881, the following
resolutions were reported by the committee and adopted :
" Resolved, That we approve of the project entertained of organizing a Woman's
National Relief Corps.
" Resolved, That such Woman's Relief Corps may use, under such title, the words
'Auxiliary to the G. A. R.'-by special indorsement of the G. A. R."
During the annual convention (1883) °f tne Department of Massachusetts,
W. R. C, Commander-in-Chief Paul Van Der Voort visited the convention,
and in most emphatic terms indorsed the movement, complimenting the ladies
of Massachusetts on having the most perfect work he had seen, and on their
earnest endeavors for the soldier, assuring them that the ambition of his
administration was that a national organization should be perfected. * * *
In general orders he instructed all comrades to meet at Denver, Col., and
form a national organization.
In response to this invitation, extended to every auxiliary in the Union,
as far as known, sixteen States were represented. After some preliminaries
it was unanimously voted to organize as a Woman's National Relief Corps,
and take up the work of Massachusetts. The objects for which we are
organized nationally are —
1st. To specially aid and assist the Grand Army of the Republic and per-
petuate the memory of their heroic dead.
2d. To assist such Union veterans as need our help and protection, and
to extend needful aid to the widows and orphans of those who have fallen ;
to find them homes and employment, and assure them of sympathy and
friends ; to cherish and emulate the deeds of our army nurses and all loyal
women who rendered loving service to their country in her hour of peril.
3d. To inculcate lessons of patriotism and love of country among our
children and in the communities in which we live ; to maintain true allegi-
ance to the United States of America ; to discountenance whatever weakens
loyalty and to encourage the spread of universal liberty and equal rights
to all.
A communication was immediately sent to the National Encampment
Grand Army of the Republic, informing it of the action taken. This
resulted in the adoption of the following resolution :
" That we cordially hail the organization of a National Relief Corps, and extend
our greeting to its members. We return our warmest thanks to the loyal women of
the land for their earnest support and encouragement, and bid them God-speed
in their patriotic work. " * * *
Philanthropies. 103
Over one hundred thousand dollars have been expended in relief by the
Woman's Relief Corps since the formation of the National order. About
sixty thousand women have banded together for this special purpose, and
obligated themselves to sustain the grand principles of fraternity, charity, and
loyalty. There are 1,500 corps, representing twenty-five permanent and two
provisional departments.
Mrs. Shattuck. Miss Clara Barton will now speak. The flag of the Red
Cross at the back of the platform introduces her to you.
THE RED CROSS.
Miss Barton. The organization of the Red Cross is the result of an
international treaty known among nations as the "Treaty of Geneva," and
has for its object the amelioration of the condition of that class of persons
who, in accordance with the customs of mankind from the earliest history
to the present, have been called to maintain the boundaries of nations and
even national existence itself, by human warfare.
Whether well or ill, needful or needless, that nations and boundaries be
so preserved, is not a question for me here to consider. That they have
been, and mainly are so preserved, that no better method is yet consummated,
and that, in the progress of humanity, the existing countries of the civilized
world have seen fit to enter into an International Treaty for the betterment
of the conditions of those subjects or citizens, who, by their laws, are called
to the performance of this duty, are facts which I am here to state. This
International Treaty of 1864 commences with the neutralizing of all parties
in their efforts at relief. It brings to the aid of the medical and hospital
departments of armies the direct, organized, and protected help of the people.
It goes through the entire category of military medical regime, as practiced
up to its date; makes war upon and plucks out its old-time barbarities, its
needless restrictions and cruelties, and, finally, in effect, ends by teaching
war to make war upon itself.
By its international code all military hospitals under its flag become
neutral, and can be neither attacked nor captured. All sick and wounded
within them remain unmolested. Surgeons, nurses, chaplains, attendants
and all non-combatants at a field, wearing the accredited insignia of the
Red Cross, are protected from capture. Badly wounded prisoners lying
upon a captured field are delivered up to their own army, if desired. All
supplies designed for the use of the sick or wounded of either army, and
bearing the sign of the Red Cross, are protected and held sacred to their
use. All convoys of wounded or prisoners in exchange are safely protected
in transit, and, if attacked from ambush or otherwise harmed, an inter-
national treaty is broken. All persons residing in the vicinity of a battle
about to take place shall be notified by the generals commanding both
armies, and full protection, with a guard, assured each house which shall
104 International Council of Women.
open its doors to the care of the wounded from either army ; thus each
house becomes a furnished field hospital and its inmates nurses.
Each nation upon its accession to the treaty establishes a national society
or committee, through which it will act internationally in its various relations.
This body corporate adopts a constitution, in the formation of which it
seeks the best methods for serving humanity in general, together with the
interests of its own people, in the direction of its legitimate efforts.
With the exception of our own, no national constitution has covered more
than the direct ground of the treaty, viz., the prevention and relief of suffer-
ing from war. The framers of the National Constitution of the Red Cross
of America foresaw that the great woes of its people would not be confined
to human warfare ; that the elements raging, unchained, would wage us
wars and face us in battles ; that as our vast territory became populated, and
people, in the place of prairies and forests, should lie in their track, these
natural agents might prove scarcely less destructive and more relentless than
human enemies ; that fire, flood, famine, pestilence, drought, earthquake
and tornado would call for the prompt help of the people no less than war,
and while organizing for the latter they included also the former. The rati-
fying congress at Berne accepted us with that digression from the original
purport of the treaty, and what we term the "civil branch " *of the Red
Cross is known abroad as the "American Amendment."
With these explanations it remains only to name some of the things accom-
plished and the changes which have taken place in consequence of this treaty
during its life of a short quarter of a century. Previous to the war of the
Crimea civil help for military necessities was unknown. Florence Nightin-
gale trod a pathless field. In the wars which followed, till 1866, even this
example was not heeded, and the wars of Napoleon III. in Northern Italy
were types of military cruelty, medical insufficiency, and needless suffering
which shocked the world. Out of the smouldering ashes of these memories
rose the clear, steady flame of the Red Cross; so bright and beautiful that it
drew the gaze of all mankind ; so broad that it reached the farthest bound
of the horizon ; so peaceful, wise, harmless and fraternal that all nations
and sects, the Christian and the Jew, the Protestant and the Catholic, the
soldier and the philanthropist, the war-maker and the peace-maker, could
meet in its softened rays, and, by its calm, holy light, reveal to each other
their difficulties, compare their views, study methods of humanity, and, from
time to time, learn from and teach to each other things better than they had
known.
Our own terrible war, which freed 4,000,000 slaves, had no ray of this fra-
ternal light. The great commissions rose and performed a work of relief
hitherto unknown, but from lack of military recognition their best efforts
comparatively failed, and from lack of permanent organization their future
possibilities were lost to the world.
Philanthropies. 105
With the Franco-German war of i87o-'7i commenced the opportunities
for the practical application of the principles of the treaty. Both nations
were in the compact. There was perfect accord between the military and the
Red Cross Relief. There was neither medical nor hospital work save through
and under the treaty of Geneva. The Red Cross brassard flashed on the
arm of every agent of relief, from the medical director at the headquarters
of the king to the little boy carrying water to his wounded lieutenant ; from
the noble Empress Augusta and her court, and poor Eugenie, while she had
one, to the patient, tired nurse in the lowliest hospital or tent by the wayside.
No record of needless inhumanity or cruelty to wounded or sick stains
the annals of that war. I walked its hospitals day and night. I served in
its camps, and I marched with its men, and know whereof I speak. The
German, the Frenchman, the Italian, the Arab, the Turco and the Zouave
were gathered tenderly alike, and lay side by side in the Red Cross palace
hospitals of Germany. The royal women, who to-day mourn their own
•dead, mourned then the dead of friend and foe.
Since that day no war between nations within the treaty has taken place
in which the Red Cross did not stand at its post at the field, and the gen-
erous gifts of neutral nations have filled its hands.
The treaty has brought the war-making powers to know each other. Four
times it has called the heads of thirty to forty nations to meet through
appointed delegates, and confer upon national neutrality and relief in war.
It has created and established one common sign for all military medical
relief the world over, and made all under that sign safe and sacred. It has
established one military hospital flag for all nations. It has given to the
people the recognized right to reach and succor their wounded at the field.
It has rendered impossible any insufficiency of supplies, either medical or
nutritive, for wounded or prisoners at any point which human sympathy and
power can reach. It has given the best inventions known to science for the
proper handling of mutilated persons, whether soldiers or civilians. The most
approved portable hospitals in the world are those of the Red Cross. It has
frowned upon all old-time modes of cruelty in destructive warfare ; poisoned
and explosive bullets are no longer popular. Antiseptic dressings and electric
lights at battle-fields are established facts, and the ambulance and stretcher-
bearers move in the rear ranks of every army. These isolated facts are only
the mountain peaks which I point out to you. The great Alpine range of
humanity and activity below can not be shown in fifteen minutes.
So much for human warfare and the legitimate dispensation of the treaty.
Touching our "American Amendment," the wars of the elements have
not left us quite at leisure. Under our constitution are formed "Associate
Societies," which aid directly in providing the relief which is dispensed. It
being the rule to aid only in calamities so large or so severe as to require
help from the general public, our societies are less frequently called to act.
8
106 International Council of Women.
They are supposed to have reserved funds or material gathered and held for
the purpose of supplying relief upon call from the National Association.
The public, in general, to a large extent, is coming to the use of the Red
Cross as a medium of conveyance and distribution for its contributions.
The National Association, with its headquarters in this city, has a field-
agent, who visits, in person, every scene where aid is rendered. Com-
mencing with the " forest fires" of Michigan in 1881, there has fallen to
its hands a share of the relief-work in the overflow of the Mississippi River
in 1882 ; of the Ohio in 1883 ; of the Louisiana cyclone the same year ; the
overflow of both the Ohio and Mississippi in 1884 > the representation of the
United States Government at the International Conference of Geneva,
Switzerland, in 1884; the exhibition of "woman's work" in the Red
Cross, both foreign and American, at the Exposition at New Orleans in
1885 ; the drought in Texas in 1886; the Charleston earthquake in 1886 ; the
representation of the United States Government again at the court of their
Royal Highnesses, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden, at Carlsruhe,
Germany, in 1887, and the relief of the sufferers from the Mt. Vernon
cyclone, from which the travel dust is still on our garments and our trunks
are not yet unpacked.
In the overflow of the rivers in 1884 the Government appropriated $150,-
000 for distribution through the War Department, and magnificently and
faithfully was that distribution made — an honor to any nation.
The Red Cross, with no appropriation and no treasury, received from its
societies and the public, and personally distributed in the space of four
months, money and material at a moderately estimated value of $175,-
000 — an honor to any people.
It will, I trust, be borne in mind that this branch of relief work is not
recognized by the treaty — that it is our own, the first publication of which,
embodying the principles of the present constitution for the " relief of
national calamities," was issued in pamphlet form, entitled "The Red
Cross — What It Is," to the Congress of 1878, with the valued assistance of
its efficient first secretary, Mrs. Hannah McL. Shephard, of this city.
But, says one, what has this war movement, this Red Cross treaty,
to do with real progress and the bringing about of that universal peace
toward which our eyes and hearts and hopes are turned, and for which we
have so long organized, labored, and prayed ? It has, my dear friends, the
same, in effect, to do with these that suffrage would have to do with woman's
position and advancement ; the same that prohibition would have to do
with temperance. Wars are largely the result of unbridled passions. That
universal treaty, binding every war-making power to wholesome restraints,
pledging it to humanity, and holding it responsible to the entire world, is
the bit in the mouth, the curb on the neck of the war horse, and while it
holds out the measure of oats in the one hand it carries the bridle in the
Philanthropies. 107
other. It constitutes a peace society which can not be sneered at in
counsel, nor ignored in war. It is one of the thresholds to the temple of
peace, but even ourselves may be farther from the entrance than we are wont
to fondly dream. Wars are organized mobs, they tell us. We are not
without that seed in our own fair land to-day.
But, again, what has the Red Cross to do with woman's work, and why
does our Miss Anthony give it place here ? Because her judgment is quick
and sound, her vision clear and strong and she sees from afar. Miss
Anthony was the first woman to lay her hand beside mine in the formation
of a Red Cross Society in her native city of Rochester, and that society has
stood like a rock through trouble and disaster, responsive to every call.
Because there are more women than men in the Red Cross of Europe to-day.
Empresses and queens lead its societies and its relief work in war, and while
each queenly wife stands with her Red Cross hand on the epauletted
shoulder of her war-meditating husband, he will consider well before he
declares. This has been and will be again the case. Women have much
to do with it, and in the great millennial day, when peace has conquered
war, and its standards float out from the shining battlements, both women
and the Red Cross will be there.
Mrs. Shattuck. I have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Emily S. Rich-
ards, the delegate of the Women's Relief Associations for the Territory of
Utah.
women's relief associations.
Mrs. Richards. The Women's Relief Society now existing in Utah,
with branches in Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Col-
orado, Europe, New Zealand, the Sandwich Islands and other places, was
organized at Nauvoo, 111., March 17, 1842. Its objects were the relief of
the poor and afflicted, the instruction of its members in moral, philoso-
phical and religious principles, and the maintenance of the rights of
women in all departments of society. A president and two counselors,
sustained by the votes of the members, are in charge of the whole so-
ciety. A secretary and treasurer, also assistant and corresponding secre-
taries are associated with them in the general management. Each branch is
organized in a similar manner and has an independent existence, and yet all
are associated under the general presidency. Utah is ecclesiastically divided
into departments corresponding, usually, with the respective counties. Each
organization of that kind is called a " Stake of Zion," and each stake is sub-
divided into wards, corresponding with the small towns or villages. Large
towns are divided into a number of wards. Each ward has a relief society,
with its president and two counselors, secretary, and treasurer. These soci-
eties are composed of women exclusively, who hold semi-monthly meetings
and conduct their own business affairs. They deliver medical, historical,
and scientific lectures and addresses on various subjects, do needle-work,
108 International Council of Women.
make arrangements for visiting the sick and relieving the wants of the poor
in their respective wards, collect funds, make reports, and keep full minutes
of their doings and accounts of their finances. Teachers visit periodically
the members at their homes. * * *
There are now four hundred relief societies in and out of Utah, with a
total membership of 22,000. They own many of the halls in which they
meet, and such property is valued at $95,000. They have laid up wheat in
granaries to the amount of 32,000 bushels, for seed or relief in case of scarc-
ity. They assist in caring for the distressed, help to wait upon the sick, and
prepare the deceased for burial. They have a biweekly paper called the
Woman's Exponent, with women as editors, writers, business agents and
'Compositors. Its columns are devoted to any and every subject specially
relating to women. The Deseret Hospital, with a lady M. D. as principal,
and skilled nurses and attendants, is under their direction. They have fos-
tered the silk industry, producing the raw material and manufacturing it
into various articles. Some of the relief societies have stores for the sale of
inaerchandise, particularly home manufactures, as they encourage industry as
■well as intellectual culture. The entire organization is a live, active, and
growing institution, and its benefits are felt in every place where it extends,
all its tendencies being to make women useful, progressive, independent
and happy.
The Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association is organized in a
similar manner to the Women's Relief Society. It has a general presidency,
with stake and ward organizations extending almost as far as the relief soci-
eties. But it is composed of younger ladies, married and unmarried, who
are associated for mutual benefit. They hold weekly meetings, managed by
themselves, and have their stake and general conference, in which they vote
for their own officers and attend to their own association business. They
compose and read essays, edit their own manuscript papers, recite, sing, dis-
cuss various subjects relating to women's duties, rights, privileges and respon-
sibilities, hear medical and physiological lectures, and engage in religious
services. At stated periods the Associations meet with the Young Men's
Mutual Improvement Societies, which are organized in a similar manner.
The organ of these young people is the Contributor. The motto of the
magazine and of those it represents is, "The Glory of God is Intel-
ligence." There are 350 of these Young Ladies' Associations, with a mem-
bership of 8,200. Their effects in promoting independent thought and
awakening an interest in useful knowledge among the young people of the
Territory are marked and of infinite value to society.
The women of Utah have organized the children, apart from their day and
Sunday-schools, into associations, which are called Primaries. Each ward
association has officers similar to those of the other societies described, and
also stake and general presidencies. The boys and girls who are enrolled
Philanthropies. 109
as members have their regular weekly meetings. They are taught to conduct
meetings and speak in public. They are visited occasionally by the ladies
of the older societies, but the organization is distinct from all others, and the
ladies controlling it manage all its affairs. There are 360 primary associa-
tions in Utah, with a membership of 25,000.
Faith in God animates the women who work in these societies in all their
exertions, which are entirely gratuitous. They are purely and truly labors
of love. We desire the universal spread of truth and the diffusion of the
Divine Spirit for the enlightenment, development and elevation of our sex,
and the ultimate redemption of the whole human race.
After the singing of the hymn, " The New America," the
meeting adjourned.
TUESDAY, MAECH 27; 1888.
EVENING SESSION.
TEMPERANCE.
Miss Anthony presiding. Invocation, Judith Ellen Foster.
Miss Anthony. Miss Frances Willard needs no introduction to you.
WOMAN IN TEMPERANCE.
Miss Willard. Dear Friends : These kind sisters who made out the pro-
gramme, in the first instance, gave me half an hour, but I had so many
women of our own to present whom you have not heard that I subdivided
the time, as I have spoken in Washington a great deal. I wanted the light
to twinkle on you from many a star of the White-Ribboned host, so I will
stop when my time is up.
We are to think to-night about the temperance reform in its modern
phases, for it has had many phases. I ask you to remember that while I
might speak on another occasion about the temperance reform as such, I am
bound by the conditions of our programme to speak especially — and so are
we all to-night — of women and temperance. Of course I can tell best about
what I^know most of, and I know what the women have done, and what tem-
perance has done for them. This work, in these fourteen years, has devel-
oped the brain of woman as no schooling ever did before, has broadened
the sympathy of her heart until it takes in all humanity, has educated her
will until it has become a mighty power, and has exalted to supreme heights
her faith in God.
The woman's temperance crusade had for its object the enthronement of
Christ's spirit in the world, in its customs, its habits and its legislation.
We have for one motto, " No sectarianism in religion." We have for
another, " No sectionalism in politics." We have for a third, " No sex in
citizenship," and besides all these we have our grand, inclusive motto of the
W. C. T. U., " For God and home and every land."
I have seen upon a platform that which, perhaps, is more remarkable than
what you see upon this one. I have beheld a Jew and a Catholic minister
seated side by side with a Methodist, Unitarian, Universalist and Baptist,
all in the utmost harmony, all with the kindest good-will. And when I saw
that I said, " God bless a cause which can bring those who differ so widely
upon one platform to utter the one sacred thought of the fight for a clear
brain and a steady-beating pulse, a protected home and a redeemed
America."
Temperance. Ill
Going to the South on five different trips, traveling and speaking in a
hundred towns and cities, I have found that, although sectionalism may be
a live issue to some, it is a dead lion to the White-Ribboners, and in its
skeleton they have found the honeycomb of reconciliation and sisterly good-
will.
I believe that whatever may come out of this mighty conflict, in which
woman and temperance are so largely synonymous, there is to come " no sex
in citizenship." I believe that we are to find that since the ballot is the
emblem of power, since majorities must decide what the law shall be, we
want woman as a voter and as a law-maker.
Law depends on the decisions of majorities. Majorities of women are
against the saloon. A.s you can not bring to bear the power of steam except
through an engine, as you can not bring to bear the power of electricity
except through a battery, so I believe you can not bring to bear the power
of the home and church forces of this nation on the saloon except at the
point where, by the correlation of governmental forces in a republic, public
opinion and ballots decide candidates and officers, and you have enforce-
ment as well as law.
You are told that public opinion seems to demand the saloon, and as a
White-Ribboner I ask, "Whose public opinion ? That of the home? " "Oh,
no; the home is against it." " Whose public opinion ? That of the church ?"
" Oh, no ; two-thirds of the church is made up of women." " Whose public
opinion?" That of men who drink and men who sell, and men in profes-
sional, business and political life who don't like to get the ill-will of those
other classes. This is the outcome of deliberate choice, based upon motives
wholly selfish. These men have saddled the liquor traffic on this nation.
But the nation has great guns of power pointing sublimely up into vacancy.
We want to bring them to the level of our use, and send their shot banging
into the eyes of the foe. It is this purpose of arming woman with the ballot
that makes me so perfectly at home on a platform like the present. It is this
which brings me to do homage to those grand pioneers, just as you do, and
no one can pay them too much gratitude and honor.
I remember at this hour the very first time I ever spoke in Rochester, in
Corinthian Hall, in 1875. I then, for the first time, met Susan B. Anthony,
at tea in the home of a mutual friend, and I learned, as everybody does who
knows how true and loyal-hearted is that woman, to love and honor her.
£Great applause.] 1 would be glad to have any amount of time taken up in
demonstrations of that character. We had started to go into the hall from
the ante-room, when Miss Anthony said to me : "I think I had better not
go in with you ; you are just beginning ; you have your reputation to make,
and some people are afraid of the unpopular ideas I represent. I will go in
by this side door, and they will never know that you were with me."
It touched my heart, her sisterly thought of me in my new position, and
112 International Council of Women.
I was not then as thoroughly indoctrinated as I am now. I thought of
it rejoicingly to-night, as I was to come forward under her auspices, with her
benediction on my head ; how times had changed ! I thought how fitting it
is that the forces of womanhood should unite themselves under the guiding
star of the woman's ballot in the hands of these brave pioneers, and I believe
the splendid marching army of the womanhood of the world shall thus go
forth to conquer.
Let us be grateful that our horizon is widening. We women have learned
to reason from effect to cause. It is considered a fine sign of a thinker to be
able to reason from cause to effect. But we, in fourteen years' march, have
learned to go from the drunkard in the gutter, who was the object lesson we first
saw, back to the children, as you will hear to-night ; back to the idea of pre-
ventive, educational, evangelistic, social, and legal work for temperance ;
back to the basis of the saloon itself. We have found that the liquor traffic
is joined hand in hand with the very sources of the National Government.
And we have come to the place where we want prohibition, first, last, and all
the time. We see that while the brewer talks about his " vested interests "
there are other vested interests. And I speak to you to-night, and these other
women who follow me will speak, on behalf of vested interests, while we lend
our voices to the motherhood of the nation that has gone down into the valley
of unutterable pain and in the shadow of death, with the dews of eternity
upon the mother's brow, given birth and being to the sons who are the
*' vested interests " of America's homes.
We offset the demand of the brewer and distiller, that you shall protect
their ill-gotten gains, with the thought of these most sacred treasures, dear to
the hearts that you, our brothers, honor ; dear to the hearts that you love
best. I bring to you this thought to-night, that you shall vote to represent
us, and hasten the time when we can represent ourselves.
I will not tax you longer, because so many are to follow me ; gracious,
and lovely women, who have given their lives in these last years to the spe-
cialties of our work. You will hear from young women, you will hear from
women in the plenitude of their strength ; you will learn how many-sided is
the battle in the great society of forty different departments, officered by
forty women in the nation, each with an auxiliary helper in each State, and
that woman with a helper in each local union of the ten thousand unions.
We have our work systematized and planned. We had to sharpen our weapons
on the plain and in full sight of the enemy, but they are beginning now to
come to a fine edge. We had to learn what not to do as well as what to do.
We have learned by the logic of defeat and the argument of events, to come
ourselves to that blessed thought of total abstinence as the cardinal doctrine
of the whole movement and the natural corollary of prohibitory law.
We honor Senator Blair, who has stood so true and loyal for this cause ;
who has seen, as we have, that the ballot in the hands of women must be one
Temperance. 113
of the weapons of this warfare ; who has seen that we must have a national
prohibitory amendment, so that we can ground our principles in the organic
law of the highest legislature of the land ; thus making the liquor traffic an
Esau, an Ishinaelite and a social Pariah in this nation. We come bringing
the most radical thoughts, because we have learned them from what we have
suffered from fighting on the very border line of progress, on the very picket
outpost of the army, not promising where we shall be to-morrow. We shall
be where we are carried forward by the Spirit of Truth, which we invoke in
steadfast faith and prayer that it may show us what is the truth of God. We
welcome to our communion all good and earnest-hearted women. As Eliza-
beth Barrett Browning said, you must pass along any truth, anything sacred,
like bread at sacrament.
I feel, as I think of the broadening, blessed work of this society, the truth
of our Quaker poet Whittier's words :
" Where'er amid the ages rise the altars of self-sacrifice,
Where love its arms hath opened wide and man for man hath freely died,
I see the same white wings outspread that hovered o'er my Master's head."
Going outside our denominational boundaries meant going out on the great
street, where we elbowed the multitude and where we found what an immense
amount of good there was in other folks beside ourselves. For one it made
me none the less loyal and tender toward my hearthstone and the church,
and I believe that that has been the effect with all of us. I believe that we
are going out into this work, being schooled and inspired for greater things
than we have dreamed, and that the esprit de corps of women will prove the
grandest sisterhood the world has ever known. As I have seen the love and
kindness and good-will of women who differed so widely from us politically
and religiously, and yet have found away down in the depths of their hearts
the utmost love and affection, I have said, what kind of a world will this be
when all women are as fond of each other as we strong-minded women are?
So, friends, as I think of the new America, the good time coming, when
He who is the best friend that woman ever knew, the Christ of God, when
He shall rule in our hearts and lives, not outwardly, but by His spirit —
as I think of it all I say to myself, I am glad I am alive, I am glad I was not
alive till this last part of the Nineteenth Century, I am glad I shall be alive
when the golden hinges turn and roll wide open the door of the Twentieth
Century that shall let the women in ; when this big-hearted brotherhood of
broad-shouldered men who have made it possible for us to have such a Coun-
cil as this, who listen to us and are more pleased with us than we are with our-
selves— and that is saying a great deal — and who, if we write a book that is
interesting, or a song, or make a speech, just say, " That is good ; go on, and
do better next time; we will buy your books and listen to your speeches " —
when these men shall see that it was not to the harm of the home, but for its
good, that we were working for temperance and for the ballot.
114 International Council of Women.
Home is the citadel of everything that is good and pure on earth ; nothing
must enter there to defile, neither anything which loveth or maketh a lie.
And it shall be found that all society needed to make it altogether home-
like was the home folks; that all government needed to make it altogether
pure from the fumes of tobacco and the debasing effects of strong drink, was
the home folks ; that. wherever you put a woman who has the atmosphere of
home about her, she brings in the good time of pleasant and friendly rela-
tionship and points with the finger of hope and the eye of faith always to
something better — always it is better further on. As I look around and see
the heavy cloud of apathy under which so many still are stifled, who take no
interest in these things, I just think they do not half mean the hard words
that they sometimes speak to us, or they wouldn't if they knew; and, after
awhile, they will have the same views I have, spell them with a capital V,
and all be harmonious, like Barnum's Happy Family, a splendid menagerie
of the whole human race — clear-eyed, kind and victorious !
Miss Anthony. I now present to you the delegate and American Secre-
tary of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Hannah Whitall
Smith, of Philadelphia.
THE LATEST EVOLUTION OF THE W. C. T. U.
Mrs. Smith. While scientists are quarreling over the evolution of the
past, the women of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union are trying to
help on the evolution of the present. Every year, every month, every day
almost, this great organization is evolving new ideas, new plans, and new
strength. One of the latest and grandest of all its evolutions is the World's
Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This organization is intended to be
a world-wide federation of all women interested in temperance or social
purity or any other form of Christian, philanthropic, or reformatory work,
without respect to nationality, class, or creed.
Far-sighted philanthropists are looking toward a time in the distant future
when the words of the poet shall be fulfilled, and
" The war-drums throb no longer, and the battle-flags be furled
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world."
The idea of this World's Union of women first came to Miss Willard when
working in California in 1883. Invisible cords seemed to draw her heart out
toward the Sandwich Islands and Japan, and urgent representations were
made to her of the blessings she might carry to these distant lands, and there
opened out before her inward eye the vision of a White-Ribbon sisterhood,
clasping hands the whole world round, and carrying everywhere its message
of temperance, purity and peace.
This vision began to be realized in 1884, when, at our annual convention,
held in Detroit, Miss Willard, in her address, urged upon us the formation
of a World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. One courageous woman
was found there who offered herself for a round-the-world organizing tour —
Temperance. 115
Mary Clement Leavitt, of Boston; and when told that she would have to take
all the financial risks upon herself, as there was no money provided, she
bravely declared that she was not afraid to go out on faith. She has now
been out four years and all her wants have been amply supplied. She has
organized in the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and
China. She is now in India and expecting to go thence to Madagascar,
Africa, Asia Minor, and wherever else she can find the smallest open door.
Everywhere she has met with the most cordial reception, and has always left
behind her a branch of our World's Union.
I hold in my hand the third annual report of the Hawaiian Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Union, and there I read that there are already thirty-two
unions among the native women on the islands of Oahu, Mani, Molokai,
and Hawaii. The "Health Primer," prepared by Mary H. Hunt, of Bos-
ton, has been translated and published in the Hawaiian language for use in
the native schools. This is also being done in Japan, and other countries
are in treaty with Mrs. Hunt in regard to it.
Other organizers besides Mrs. Leavitt are now in the field. Madam Ander-
son Meyerhelm, of Stockholm, is at work in Sweden, Norway, and Russia,
and Miss Gray, of England, is working in Switzerland, Scotland, and Ger-
many. Everywhere the deepest interest is manifested. The women of the
world are waking from their sleep of ages and need only the helping hand of
their more favored sisters to enable them to rise up and join the great army
who are moving on to woman's peaceful emancipation and victories.
In 1886 the British Woman's Temperance Association came into our fed-
eration, and its president, Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, the sister of the
famous John Bright, M. P., was made the President of the World's Union
for the two years following. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union of
the United States has proved, beyond the possibility of question, that the
existence of a common organization, binding together a large extent of coun-
try, is of great advantage in transmitting from one place to another sugges-
tions for work, and help in carrying out these suggestions. It is obvious
that a World's Woman's.Christian Temperance Union must necessarily mul-
tiply this effectiveness in proportion to the extent of its organization. It will
provide a world wide net-work by which temperance and social reformers
of every nation may communicate with one another, and be enabled to help
each other.
A petition has been prepared by the World's Union that is to be translated
into the language of every nation and circulated in every country, praying
the men convened in all their great legislative assemblies and represented by
their potentates for protection and deliverance for themselves and their chil-
dren from the twin curses of the liquor traffic and the opium trade. This
petition is to be signed by at least one million women, and, when finished,
will be carried by a deputation to every government of the world in turn,
116 International Council of Women.
beginning with our own Congress and the Dominion of Canada. Already
thousands of signatures have been secured in many different countries. In
Ceylon alone 16,000 natives signed it in a few weeks.
The World's Union will be also a great protective agency encircling the
world for the saving of the boys and girls who are annually scattering them-
selves over every quarter of the globe in search of work or of education.
A very touching illustration of the value of this department is an incident
which happened to Mrs. Mary B. Willard, in Chicago, a few years ago. A
poor woman came to her one day in great distress over a wayward, runaway
son, who had wandered to St. Louis and was, she had heard, ill in a den of
infamy there. The mother was in despair. " What shall I do ? " she cried.
" I have no money to go to St. Louis myself, and I have no friends there.
What shall I do ?" "Oh," replied Mrs. Willard, " it will be all right. I
will write, if you like, to the Woman's Christian Temperance Union there,
and they will look up your boy." The grateful mother accepted the offer,
and the letter was sent that day. The Union in St. Louis were true to their
mission, and the boy was rescued, and finally restored to his mother. When
she came again to see Mrs. Willard, with tears of joy streaming from her
eyes, she said : "Oh, Mrs. Willard, it seems to me that the Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Union is like a million mothers all over the land." And
so it is. Some one has said that the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
is only organized mother-love. If, then, not only the one million but the
many millions of mother hearts all over the world can but be organized
through this federation into a united band for saving the children, what mar-
velous results we shall surely see !
It is also intended to make this World's Union a means of influencing inter-
national questions that affect social reforms between different countries.
There is a work to be done in this direction in improving the extradition
treaties as occasion arises, and in bringing pressure to bear against the forc-
ing of stimulants and narcotics upon savage and semi -civilized communities.
As the uncivilized portion of the world is at present in the course of being
rapidly divided under the nominal sovereignty of the great powers, this is
exactly the time when prompt action ought to be taken to force every govern-
ment to protect these helpless people from the curse of the liquor traffic. I
would say, in conclusion, that all women's societies can freely come into
this world-wide federation, for it is not intended that it shall control in any
way the plans of any society, but that it shall simply unite them all into one
common organization, for the better furtherance of the purpose that ani-
mates each.
Miss Anthony. Our next speaker comes from Canada, Mrs. Bessie Starr
Keefer, delegate of the Toronto Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Mrs. Keefer. I have heard a great deal since I came to Washington
about every nation on the face of the globe, but nothing whatever concern-
Temperance. 117
ing Canada, except a little bit about its codfish, and I am beginning to feel
as though .you imagine we are pretty small people across the line ; but we are
not. I found that fifteen years ago there was no college here in the United
States where I could get a university education, so I had to step across the
line; and when I had been there for some time I decided to live across the
line, and that is the way I came to be a Canadian. I am proud to be a Canadian
when I begin to talk temperance, because we have in Canada more prohibi-
tion, comparatively, than any other nation on the globe. True, we suffered
a defeat not very long ago at the Halton election. I wonder if you know
what we mean by the Halton election ?
We Canadians some time ago had been petitioning the government, con-
tinually troubling them, for a prohibitory law, and they said, we won't give
you what you are asking for, but we will give you this Scott act, which you
can take and see what you can do throughout your country, and if you can
get a majority of the counties in the Dominion to carry the Scott act we
will give you prohibition. That is the way the politicians talk. We are
waiting for the promise to be fulfilled, for we carried the Scott act in five-
ninths of the counties of the Dominion, and we carried it in some other of
the counties, but still we didn't get a prohibitory law. Every now and then
the liquor party go to work and try to overset the Scott act, for that Canada
temperance act allows that every three years a repeal vote can be tried.
Year after year they have tried it with some of the counties, but this is the
first time it has been successful. This time in Halton.
When the act was passed six years ago, it was by a majority of only eighty.
Three years later the liquor party attempted a repeal, and they brought
their best men — with a note of interrogation after best — into the country;
they brought them from the United States and England, and they spent an
immense amount of money in Halton County, but we carried the Scott act ;
we carried the vote against repeal by a majority of an hundred and eighty.
So this year they again demanded a repeal. They had learned some lessons ;
they did not import speakers, nor use any of the men we had in our own
country; nor did they approve this time of public agitation, for they had
learned that the more this matter was discussed the worse it was for them.
So they worked in an underhand way, and we, somehow or other, have lost
the Scott act in Halton County. Then the people all over the country
talked as if we were defeated. I don't know how the men felt ; they looked
pretty blue after it. But we temperance women are made of india-rubber.
So we don't feel a bit discouraged, but are really beginning to think that
that defeat of the Scott act was the very best thing that could occur in the
Dominion of Canada, because I am afraid some of us were beginning to feel
a little bit satisfied with the law. It was the best we had, but it was a very
imperfect measure ; and now we shall agitate for something that means a good
deal more. * * *
118 International Council of Women.
When we demanded that the sufrage be extended to married women one
of our members in the House rose and said : " We must look at that question
from all sides to see just what those women mean." The extension of the
municipal suffrage, mind you; it wasn't the political suffrage. " The exten-
sion of the municipal suffrage means immediate prohibition." And then, to
my great astonishment, the grand, splendid temperance men of ours in the
legislature voted against our measure and thus against immediate prohibition.
T V *
Miss Anthony. I now present to you one of our youngest and most faith-
ful girls, who is everything to Miss Willard and everything to the cause —
Miss Anna Gordon.
HOW TO REACH THE CHILDREN.
Miss Gordon. The work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union
for the childhood of this nation is fourfold : (i.) Through the free kinder-
gartens which our societies are establishing, where the child is so early guided
into paths of pure living. (2.) Through the Sunday-schools of nearly all
denominations, where young people are taught that this body is the " Temple
of the Holy Ghost," and poisons have no place there. (3.) Through scien-
tific temperance teaching in the public schools. (4.) And, lastly, through
the distinct juvenile organization which we call the Loyal Temperance
Legion.
We can not be too thankful for the grand advance step in temperance
legislation by which, in so many of our States and in all our Territories, we
have laws requiring scientific temperance teaching in the public schools, and
as this specific education is the first and main object of our juvenile temper-
ance organization, we often hear the query, " Is not this public school
teaching enough ? "
At first thought one might say that, in a community where the law is well
enforced by a school board and teachers in thorough sympathy with it, the
children might consider it an insult to their intelligence were they asked to
organize a society wherein they could be taught the scientific basis for total
abstinence, when they probably would know more about the poison, alcohol,
and its physiological effects, than most of the grown people in the same
locality. But we ought to band these children together to train them as
temperance workers, that the principles taught in school may be wrought
out in active service, and that the truths there learned may be supplemented
by more elaborate illustration than the most faithful teacher will have time to
undertake with a curriculum already crowded. In school the child is taught,
but in our societies he must be trained, and we can not afford to let the chil-
dren lose the benefit of associated work in a society of their own, which
means as much in rallying children as older people.
We who wear the White Ribbon are women of peace, but we believe in
training the children to a warfare against sin and every bad habit, not only
that " all things bright and good may seem their natural habitude," but
Temperance. 119
because of the beautiful, unconscious influence of the little child, which must
be utilized for our cause. George Eliot says : "In old days there were angels
who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of
destruction. We see no white-winged angels now, but yet men are led away
from threatening destruction ; a hand is put into theirs which leads them
forth gently toward a calm and bright land, so that they look no more back-
ward; and that hand may be a little child's."
Miss Anthony. You will now listen to a woman who, at least thirty-
five years ago, was speaking in behalf of the emancipation of four millions
of slaves, Mrs. Frances Ellen Harper.
THE NEGLECTED RICH.
Mrs. Harper. Society organizes its charities and corrections for its per-
ishing and dangerous classes ; builds prisons and reformatories and the gal-
lows for one, and extends sheltering arms to the other. There is a fine
sympathy among the American people to which we can readily appeal on
occasions of widespread calamities ; a sympathy which reached out its hands
to Chicago when she sat down by the ashes of her conflagration, which has
been more ready to give than even Boston may have been ready to receive ;
a sympathy which extended itself to the Southwest when the yellow-fever
was breathing its bane upon the morning air and distilling its poison on the
midnight dews ; but who thinks of feeling or caring for the neglected rich —
the men with plethoric purses but attenuated souls, the moral cripples who
tread on velvet carpets, who suffer from the most fatal of all neglects — self-
neglect — a neglect which projects itself into the lives of others?
No mother can waste her physical strength and dwarf her moral and
spiritual capacities without entailing a reaction on the lives of her children.
No man can make his heart a ledger and write upon it nothing but tax and
loss and gain, average and barter, without cheating the world through what
he withholds from it.
The strength of a nation is not in the power of its armies, the strength of
its plots, nor wealth of its coffers, but in the intelligence of its people, its
happy homes, and well-trained and educated children. I do not stand here
to make a tirade against wealth, nor to say that we have not among us men
and women who hold wealth as a sacred trust and regard themselves as
stewards of God to make the world gladder by their presence and better
through their influence. But the class to which I refer are the people who
give to life false values and fictitious estimates ; the men who increase their
possessions through wrong-doing, who uphold prosperous sins, and virtually
say, "Let us make money, though we extract it from blood and tears."
Self-neglected men to-day sustain the liquor traffic, though it grinds out in
our midst a fearful grist of misery, sin, and death. I hear the clink of the
dollar and the plea of the shopkeeper, but above it all I hear the agonized
cry of the drunkard's wife and the wail of his deserted children. * * *
120 International Council of Women.
In the South men fettered the slave and cramped their own souls, denied
him knowledge and darkened their own spiritual insight ; if heathenism
judged aright that a degraded woman could not be the mother of a hero,
what breadth of philanthropy could the child of the master learn from the
lips of the slave? Selfishness, luxury, and idle ease are not bracing atmos-
pheres in which to develop the manly virtues and Christian graces. Neither
are homes of ignorance and poverty good schools for the development of all
that is best in human nature. If neglect, ignorance, are fruitful sources of
untold misery, then is it not an important question to ask what shall be done
with the neglected rich who need truth more than flattery ; the men who
make corners in wheat and combinations in coal; who grind the faces of the
poor by the depression of labor; who throw their lives between God's sun-
shine and the shivering poor?
Let the horns, the school, and the college combine to teach the young les-
sons which they may bind as an amulet around their heads and throw as a
bulwark around their lives. Let the young learn that all the great battles of
humanity are not yet fought out ; that if slavery was the enemy of one race
we have another battle on hand with the enemy of every race under heaven,
and that the world has need, now as then, of noble deeds and earnest men
and women, tender, true, and strong to war with error, sin, and wrong.
Let the press stand on the side of the home and the church of God, against
the madness and folly of the rum traffic. And in conclusion let the pulpit
teach the sacredness of man, the intrinsic dignity of the soul, its high ori-
gin, its relationship to God, and that the weakest and poorest little one is
linked to the throne of the Eternal by such strong but invisible ties that if
you rudely jar them upon earth they will tremble around the throne; let it
be impressed upon the conscience of the neglected rich that while men may
boast of the aristocracy of wealth and talent, the aristocracy of the soul out-
ranks all other. The truest science is that which leads to a truer life ; the
highest of arts is the art of building a good character.
Miss Anthony. Our next speech will be from Mrs. Susan H. Barney, of
Rhode Island, National Superintendent of the Prison, Jail, Police, and Alms-
house Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
POLICE MATRONS.
Mrs. Barney. It wasn't strange that the National Woman's Christian
Temperance Union should go into the dark places of the world, to the
prisons and almshouses, where we find those who wander in strange paths.
But at the very first oars was reform work, and we stood for two or three
years upon the edge of the precipice trying to pull those back who were in
danger and keep them from going over. But they have been worsted, they
have been carried out of the police station, they have been carried out to the
house of correction, but we have followed them. Then naturally our hearts
turned to those unfortunate women, the great bond of sisterhood stretched
Temperance.
out over these classes, and we came to realize that there was a serious gap
between the work of prevention and the work of reformation. As we inves-
tigated we found that women were arrested either on suspicion, or for slight
misdemeanor or for crime, and were taken to the police station, searched if
need be, and there were various reasons that led to this searching, such as
stolen goods, or weapons, or liquor. They were searched by men, locked
up in a cell — perhaps underground — and shut up there until the morning,
when the policeman took them before the justice.
What we ask, friends, is that in every city there shall be at one or more
stations a woman with full police authority, into whose hands every woman
arrested shall be given to be cared for ; that care to extend to the court, where
the matron shall go, sit by her, and protect her until she is sentenced or re-
leased. Of course we are told that none but strong men can manage these un-
fortunates, but it would be well in the interests of good morals to give them the
protection of a good woman's presence ; and it would be a protection for the
police themselves from the foul charges often made and which doubtless are
frequently untrue. A pure woman there could have an influence which would
mean vastly more than men realize.
I remember very well my experience in my own city. They said to us,
"Well, if you could see one woman that comes in here three or four times a
year, ' Old Sal !' " — they told me it always took four policemen to bring her
into the cell, and usually they got their faces scratched. One morning these
policemen stood there radiant, saying : " We have got her here this morning,
and we would like to see you bring her in ; if you can do that we will not
oppose you any more." The chief offered to send two men to take care of
me. I said, " I don't want them." So they let me go alone. As I came to
the cell I rapped with the key and opened the door, and there in the long,
dark, narrow cell crouched the woman, looking more like a wild beast than
a human being. She was just ready to spring, as she was expecting the
policemen, and cried out, " Who are you?" " I am your friend." " No,
you are not ; I haven't got any friends. I thought something was queer
when somebody rapped at the door ; I never had that done in all the times
I have been here before. Who are you, anyway ; a policeman ?" "No, I
am a policewoman." " Oh, I didn't know they had any such things." I
looked down into her eyes and called her by her last name with Mrs. before
it. "Who told you that; I have not heard it before for forty years." I
said : " You know you have got to go into a court in a minute and you are not
fit to go," and I began to smooth her hair. I took a pin out of my own hair;
she hadn't a button or a pin or fastening of any kind to her clothes ; she sat
there tugging and holding them together, and as I tried to arrange her gar-
ments she said : " Tell me what you're up to, tell me what you mean."
By and by, looking into her eyes, I said : " Do you remember the first time
you were ever in a police station?" "Oh, God, don't I remember it !" " How
9
122 International Council of Women.
old were you?" " I wasn't sixteen." " How old are you now?" "I am
more than sixty. " " How many times have you been in these places ?" " Oh,
I don't know; I guess God don't know, it is so often." " Look here, Sallie,
if I had been there that first morning — do you remember how you felt?"
"Ah, I was almost scared to death; I cried all night." "Sallie, if I had
been there then and had wiped the tears off your face, if I had put your hair
up and put my hand on your shoulders as I have now, what would it have
meant to you?" "Oh, I would never have got back again, but nobody
ever cared." " Now, let me tell you, Sallie, I want you to do something
for me ; I want to get a woman to go into these places to care for the women
in the way I want to care for you ; wouldn't you like to do it to help me?"
" I would do anything I could to help you," she said. " Now, the police-
men say I can't bring you into court this morning." "They don't know what
you can do." " Will you go quietly with me?" " I will do anythingyou tell
me to." Then, after a minute, I said to her, "Sallie, do you remember
your mother? " " Oh, God, don't talk about it ; she's dead long ago. I
suppose she died before I was seven years old." " Was she a good mother
to you, Sallie? " " The best that a child ever had." " Did she ever pray
with you, Sallie? " " Oh, don't ; you will kill me if you talk about it."
" Sallie, I am going to pray with you," and with my hands upon the poor
head I lifted up my voice to Him who is not willing that she should perish —
that any should perish. Oh, how pleasant it seemed to us that morning ; it
seemed to me that instead of my hands upon her tempted, tired head there
were the hands that had the nail-prints in them. She said, " I feel like
another woman." "They are calling us now; we must go. You will
remember, now, what you have promised?" " I will remember." I said
to her, "Shall you take my arm or shall I take yours? " She looked me
over and said, " Well, I am about three times as large as you ; I guess you'd
better take mine." So we went into the court. They said they would have
cheered us if it had been proper. A policeman swore a round oath and said
I had bewitched Sallie, but some one keener than the policeman said,
" She's got the touch of the Master."
I would like to lay a little part of this burden upon every woman's heart.
This Police Matron movement has passed beyond experiment. Commenced
in 1877, in Portland, Maine, it has moved on until it is inaugurated in ten
cities. In Massachusetts is our greatest success, where a bill has passed for
the appointment of one or more matrons in all the larger cities. New York
has a bill before the legislature which we are hopeful of having passed.
Chicago inaugurated the movement by the Woman's Christian Temper-
ance Union placing matrons at the police station and donating the salary to
the city, because the city couldn't afford it. The first quarter, the matron
at the Harrison-street station had fifteen hundred girls under her care;
the next year the city adopted the movement, and now they have ten
Temperance. 123
police matrons alternating day and night between five stations, and they
have had eleven thousand women and girls under their care. While we were
working it out in Philadelphia there were two births in two months in the
police station, and only men present in that hour of woman's direst need.
Such things have not been uncommon. Philadelphia has just made appro-
priations for two more matrons, and has reported nine thousand persons
under their care, reaching all the way from three years of age upwards.
This movement is in the interest of decency and humanity, and I hope
every woman here, by her advocacy of it, will help to bring about the time
when these women, some of them more sinned against than sinning, may
have a door opened to them, and be brought to the touch of the Master's
hand.
Miss Anthony. One fact in regard to police matrons. In the District*
of Columbia a Suffrage Association Committee, of which Mrs. Jane H.
Spofford is chairman, have had this matter for some time under considera-
tion. Through Mrs. Spofford's efforts a petition has been extensively circu-
lated and signed by many of the leading men in Washington, and there is
now pending in Congress a bill for the appointment of police matrons in this
city. Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett, delegate of the National Temperance Hos-
pital and Medical College Association, will now address you.
THE NATIONAL TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL.
Dr. Burnett. The advancement of a nation depends largely upon the
health of its people. Physicians are the recognized guardians of the public
health, and nobly have they met the trust. The great aim of the physician
and of all medicine should be to prevent disease and to restore the sick to
health. The science of medicine is, however, so complex a study — it em-
braces so wide a range of knowledge, there are so many problems yet
unsolved — that some conditions of vital importance to the health of the
people may, unless special thought is given to them, be in danger of being
overlooked. Among these is the use of alcohol as medicine.
Is alcohol necessary in medicine ? There are no statistics to prove that
alcohol can prevent disease or death. The highest judicial power in the land,
the Supreme Court of the United States, in its recent decision based upon the
Fourteenth Amendment, declares that " we can not shut out of view the fact,
within the knowledge of all, that the public health, the public morals and
the public safety may be endangered by the general use of intoxicating
drinks." It has been scientifically demonstrated that the effect of alcohol
upon the nerve-centers is to narcotize or paralyze them. * * *
It is to prove that alcohol is not needed in nor for medicine that the Na-
tional Temperance Hospital and Medical College Association has been
established, based upon the principle — the successful treatment of disease
124 International Council of Women.
without alcohol. In this we do not claim originality, for one of like nature
was established in England years ago, but we do urge upon your thought
that there exists a great necessity for such an institution in our own country,
which will make investigation into this subject, that we may demonstrate by
facts which are accessible, voluminous and incontrovertible, that alcohol is
not necessary in medical practice. The London Temperance Hospital has
already arrested the attention of English scientists and concentrated their
thoughts upon the subject. The reports of that hospital state that "an
experience of fifteen years has justified the widest possible adoption of the
principle — no alcohol in medicine."
But we need to investigate this question for ourselves. The climate of
America, its form of government, its mixed population and its numberless
race crossings, its exciting political and business life into which our people
are drawn as into a maelstrom, all tend to make of us a peculiar and complex
people, and to create conditions of weakness and disease which demand
especial study as to their causes, the effect of narcotics upon them, and the
surest methods of dealing with these causes and effects.
Realizing the vital necessity for an object-lesson which should arrest the
thought of American people upon this subject, a body of earnest, philan-
thropic women determined to establish a National Temperance Hospital in
Chicago, and, later, as soon as sufficient funds can be secured from friends
of the principle, to build not only a hospital and training-school for nurses,
but a medical college, where students shall have^an opportunity to study
and compare the success of these methods of treatment with those of other
hospitals.
The hospital and training-school for nurses were opened in Chicago two
years ago. Our board of trustees is composed entirely of women ; but in all
of our branches of work outside of the board, men and women will work
together. * * * Our largest gifts and donations to the present time
have been from women — two having endowed perpetual beds at five thou-
sand dollars each, and three others having given twenty-five hundred dollars
each. In one respect we are international, for we have patients from all
parts of the United States and from Canada. We have many more appli-
cants than our present building will accommodate. We find that we must
enlarge our work, and are planning to build as soon as the money can be
secured.
Organized as we are for an especial purpose, we have a need of special
rules for our government. The following is one of the articles of our con-
stitution : All medicines used in the hospital must be prepared without alco-
hol, and all physicians accepting positions on the medical staff must pledge
themselves not to administer alcohol in any form to any patient in hospital
or dispensary, nor to call in counsel any physician who will advise the use of
alcohol.
Temperance. 125
About seven hundred cases in all have been treated during the last two
years. They are of both sexes, from all classes of people, and include all
general conditions of disease, acute and chronic, whether requiring medical
or surgical aid. We have as yet had no deaths. Our experience already
proves that even in the most critical stages of shock and collapse our patients
are better without alcohol than with it. Not only does the period of depres-
sion seem to be safer, but we find that the reactionary fever is not so great,
and that the vital forces can more fully assert themselves without the nar-
cotizing influence of alcohol. An accurate record of cases and treatment
is kept for future scientific reference. * * *
Friends, the bed-rock of the temperance question is, No alcohol in medi-
cine. It reaches into every home. It affects alike all classes of people and
all parties. It is not a political question, but it is one that vitally affects the
efforts of all philanthropists and statesmen. * * *
Miss Anthony. I now introduce to you Matilda B. Carse, of Chicago,
President of the Woman's Temperance Building Association.
THE TEMPERANCE TEMPLE.
Mrs. Carse. Fourteen years have sped by since that noble band of women
at Hillsboro', Ohio, inaugurated the crusade against the saloon, the outcome
of which has been the organization of the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union in every State and Territory in this country, and also in many lands
beyond the sea. Our organization has no less than forty-three separate and
distinct lines of work. From this you can judge we are laying broad and
deep foundations. But to make it more effective, we must have money to
push these different lines of work on to greater success. We need national
headquarters worthy our grand constituency, which numbers 200,000 women,
besides 200,000 boys and girls in the Loyal Temperance Legions.
The need of a national building and large income has impressed itself
upon me with ever-growing power during the last five years. I have heard
a voice, distinct and imperative : " Say to these women, 'Arise and build !' "
In obedience to the command, I have undertaken, with the co-operation of
Miss Willard, and the assistance of the great temperance host, to erect a
building in Chicago, to be known as the Temperance Temple. In pur-
suance of this long- contemplated plan, on the 13th of July, 1887, the Wo-
man's Temperance Building Association was incorporated. Its purpose is to
erect in Chicago a building as headquarters for the National Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Union, with a capital stock of $500,000 ; shares, $100
each. When the stock is all sold $300,000 worth of bonds, bearing 5 per
cent, interest, will be issued.
The local societies of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union are
asked to give $500,000 towards this enterprise. There are ten thousand
local unions in the country. If but one-half of these give $100 each, we
have the desired half-million, which is the amount of the capital stock. In
126 International Council of Women.
order, however, to give the unions sufficient time to raise this sum, the
stock will be sold to capitalists who are friendly to the cause, with the priv-
ilege of buying it back again within five years, with the understanding, also,
that the dividends are not to exceed 5 per cent, annually. It is hoped that
at the end of five years the desired $500,000 will be raised by the unions,
with which the corporation will buy up the entire capital stock for the
National Society.
A most valuable lot, with a frontage on three streets, in the very finest busi-
ness portion of the city, has been obtained. The lot is 166 feet long by 100
feet deep. The only way it can be secured is by a lease-hold title. The
lease, however, is perpetual, and the charge for ground rent, $35,000 a year,
can never be increased. It is proposed to erect upon this an edifice which
will cost $800,000. It is to be a great office building, with the exception of
rooms for national headqaurters and a hall which will hold about one
thousand persons. It is to be twelve stories high. This building will bring in
a rental amounting, at the lowest calculation, to $181,500 a year. With this
money we propose to pay off the $300,000 bonded debt. When the build-
ing is clear of debt, the National Society, having free headquarters, will also
receive half the income from the rentals. The other half will go to the
States. The States will receive a pro rata of this dividend in proportion to
the amount they have given toward the building fund. * * *
The style of architecture chosen is the late Gothic of France. The enrich-
ment is very largely concentrated about the main entrance, where it is
intended to carve the coats-of-arms of all the various State organizations
belonging to the National Union and the heraldic devices relating
thereto. In the large tympana above the outer and inner entrance through
the main doorway, the general coat-of-arms of the National Union and the
name of the building are to be wrought in glass mosaics, which will be equally
brilliant by night or day. * * * Two large fountains adorn the two
corners on the main front. The tower is so large and important as to domi-
nate the building, and also the entire city, and it is hoped that the Madonna
and Child, which forms the finial, will indicate to all observers that the
temple is not merely a commercial structure, but has for its> object some-
thing higher — the protection of home.
A board of trustees has been secured, who are men of national celebrity.
On the board of directors are four gentlemen, some of them being among
the largest capitalists of Chicago. Miss Esther Pugh, our national treasurer,
is the recipient daily of a continuous stream of small sums, varying from ten
cents to one hundred dollars. Not only does this money come from all the
States and Territories of our own land, but from all parts of the world ;
Europe, Japan, India, and the islands of the sea have contributed toward
the fund. Everything in connection with this enterprise is progressing most
Temperance. 127
satisfactorily. We expect to raise the entire amount of the capital stock this
year. In May, 1889, we hope to lay the corner-stone of this woman's temple.
Do you see anything prophetic in it ? Will it not usher grandly in the
twentieth century, which is destined to be the woman's century, par excel-
lence ?
Oh, fair is the vision that greets me,
As my eyes pierce futurity's veil.
Of a temple whose wonderful beauty
Outrivals antiquity's tale.
Its walls are of marble the whitest,
Symbolic of purposes pure ;
And the grandest of human endeavors
In its massive proportions endure.
Each statue so proudly uprising,
Each beautiful fresco of art,
Embodies a sacrifice noble
From many a womanly heart.
America's women are praying
For the day when their eyes shall behold
The glorious Temperance Temple
Its wonderful beauty unfold.
Miss Anthony. This to which you have just listened is not a dream, a
mere speculation of a person who has had no financial experience whatever,
but it is from the head and the pen of a woman who has made a great suc-
cess financially in the management of a newspaper which indeed surpasses
any woman's enterprise ever known — the Union Signal, of Chicago. I now
present to you Mary H. Hunt, the National Superintendent of Scientific In-
truction of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
OUR REASONS.
Mrs. Hunt. Tried by the canons of modern civilization the saloon is a
nuisance, and why it can not be abated is a very serious question, and one we
are trying to answer. But under our institutions one can not chase a thousand,
nor two put ten thousand to flight in a fair count on election returns. We
must have iust one more vote for " no saloons " than " for saloons " in order
to get prohibition even nominally, and to get it really we must have a control-
ling majority. We have tried this experiment in four States during the past
year, and the saloon won every time. Why? Because there was a major-
ity of men in those States that believed in drink, and thev wanted it. And
the papers said public opinion did not sustain prohibition in those States.
What John thinks is private opinion, but what all the Johns think is public
opinion. Now, if Mary could only have voted, if she could have been
counted, it might have changed the returns. But they won't count Mary;
she is out, and so the question of shutting up the saloon is virtually a ques-
tion of how soon can we convert these Johns to total abstinence, and, when
they have once begun to drink, this is a very difficult thing to do. Our thought
is turned toward that new half-million voters that come in every year, as the
128 International Council of Women.
statistics show us, and we are saying that we will devote our attention to
them, and if we can only win them we will very soon change the situation.
Therefore we have organized in this country the Temperance Educational
Movement.
It is five years since the first temperance law was enacted in Vermont, and
now thirty-four States and Territories in this country have provided for the
temperance education of children. There are more than six and one-half
millions of children in those States and Territories that are now taught that
alcohol is a poison. They are being trained and drilled, and if you put your
ear to the ground-path of history you will hear the coming of the army. There
is buoyancy and elasticity in its tread. But there are some States — we call
them the unpossessed lands — on the south of the Potomac, where it would not
be of much use to get a temperance educational law. There are eighteen mil-
lion children of school-age in this country, and for seven and a half million
of these there are no schools, and, worse yet, no money in the locality to
furnish them. There is a great impoverished territory, but these people
are doing more for schools, in proportion to their property, than are some
of us in the North. And yet a gentleman, the chairman of the committee
of education in the Methodist Conference in Georgia, wrote me that the
Sta,te provided for schools for only three months in the year, and two-thirds
of that time they had hardly any schools at all, so imperfect are the accom-
modations.
And now you can see why I want the Blair Education Bill to pass. You can
see how essential it is to the completion of our purpose and plan that the day
should dawn when every child in this Republic shall be taught in the schools
to abhor strong drink. That bill has passed the United States Senate three
times. All the venom, all the misrepresentations, all the caricature that
could be gathered up from the bottomless pit have been poured upon it, and
still it lives. They say it is dead, but it is not ; nothing can die that is
essential to the preservation of a Republic like this. God never launched
here the great experiment of self-government and then left it without His
omnipotent power to support it. It is in God's eternal purpose, and it is essen-
tial for the bringing in of the day, as we have already said, when our children
shall all know better than to drink and smoke as their fathers did. * * *
The session closed with the singing of "Home, Sweet Home,"
by the audience.
WEDNESDAY, MAECH 28, 1888.
MORNING SESSION.
INDUSTRIES.
Mrs. Laura M. Johns, President Kansas Equal Suffrage
Association, presiding. Invocation, Rev. Annie H. Shaw.
Mrs. Johns. Martin Luther's first-born daughter was dead, and he had
entered the room where lay the beautiful mortal part of her, clothed for the
tomb, and found there Catherine von Bora weeping sorely over the bier.
He said to her : " Sweetheart, why do you weep so bitterly? This is a hard
world for girls." And, truly, the history of the ages does not show us
that life is a rose-lined pathway ; neither is it flower-strewn when we are
women. And the farther you glance down the long vista of the past the
blacker does the record become. Few things more severely try my patience
than to hear the lamentations of certain folk over the good old days that
are gone — the days of our grandmothers — for surely it seems to me that
human kind is steadily advancing to a higher and broader plane.
Less than fifty years ago there were only four gainful avocations open to
women compelled to earn their living — at the point of a needle, amid
the whirl of factory machines, teaching little children A B C's, or doing
housework. From those four avocations, only such a short time ago, women
have now entered into hundreds of employments — many of them unusual —
even Margaret Fuller's prophecy of the woman sea captain is now fulfilled.
But with all these places open, the fact yet remains that women are
receiving unequal wages for equal work. While there is any industry closed
that they are fitted to enter, while the wages are less than those of men who
do the same work and do no more and in no better fashion, our mission is
not fulfilled and the heavenly vision is not materialized.
In my own State, in progressive Kansas, we have not a few industries open
to women, and they are building up fast, considering the youth of our State
and the fact that women are in the minority. We have much sewing and
pretty good wages for sewing women. We have much housework done
at living rates. We have 5,300 teachers, and notwithstanding they receive
smaller wages than the men, the difference is much less than between the
average wages of the men and women in the older States. We have school
suffrage in Kansas, women as members of school boards and as county superin-
tendents, and many of the school-houses which dot our prairies were built by
women's votes. Until recently only the women in the country and in the
small visages had school suffrage in my State ; but by the enactment of the
municipal suffrage law, which lifted my Kansas sisters out of the ranks of
130 International Council of Women.
idiots, the women in all the cities of our State are now in possession of
the school suffrage, and the wages of teachers must come up.
We have bee-keeping and a little silk-worm raising, but we do not hope to do
much with them. We have many women practicing medicine ; a woman
easily builds up a practice there; the country is growing. This is an adver-
tisement for Kansas, you see. There are five lawyers, and still more are
studying with the intention of practicing. We have fifteen editors, and
most of these are editors, publishers and proprietors, and are able to do
any part of the business, from setting type to writing the brightest editorials of
our day. We have many cashiers, and a great merchant told me recently that
the women are monopolizing this position j thev are making the best cash-
iers in the world, because they are more accurate. This was very refreshing,
as we have been wearied with the declaration that the feminine brain is so
constructed that women can be nothing but inaccurate. Then we have
farmers, stenographers, type-writers, photographers, and real-estate agents.
Our women succeed admirably in the real-estate business, but the main
objection is in the fact that it requires a great deal of talking. I think I
might class among the leading industries in our State the homestead of
lands. Many of your New England schoolmarms are going West and tak-
ing up lands ; and the other industry is marrying. Marriage in Kansas pays
better ultimately than it does in most States, because of the joint earnings
of the joint corporation, woman is reasonably sure, under the law, of one-
half after her husband has emigrated to that land to which earthly possessions
are not checked through. Hopeful as is all this, our industrial opportunities
are yet inadequate and considered unimportant.
The report of our Commissioner of Labor Statistics appeared without a
single word as to the conditions of our laboring women. A letter from this
bureau just received, however, attests that a mighty correlation of forces is
at work to achieve woman's industrial redemption. These gentlemen say
that they are about to enter on the business of collecting statistics of Kansas
women's industries. They say, " Our personal observation of the oppres-
sion and discrimination, which working women are compelled to undergo,
leads us to believe that our noblest and highest efforts can be devoted to no
better purpose than to the enlightenment of the public upon the barbarism
which clings to the treatment of the majority of our working women."
Victor Hugo says : "A day will come when the cannon ball will be ex-
hibited and gazed upon with as great astonishment as is to-day the instrument
of Inquisitorial torture." Aye, and the day will come when we shall regard
with equal surprise the fact that the women of the nineteenth century had
only a menial place in the industrial world, and received the smallest wages
for their work. We believe that the industrial advance and the financial
independence of a woman, married or single, will furnish the solution to
many social problems. The gravity of this question makes it a fitting subject
for discussion in this great Council.
Industries. 131
I now have the honor to introduce to you Mrs. Mary A. Livermore,
whose name and fame are so well known to you that she needs no word of
introduction at my hands.
INDUSTRIAL GAINS OF WOMEN DURING THE LAST HALF-CENTURY.
Mrs. Livermore. Our social structure has been based on the theory that
" all men support all women," a theory which has never been true, and
which is farther from being true to-day than ever before. Consequently,
boys have been educated to have some clear-cut, well-defined purpose in life.
The whole world of culture, work, and business has been open to them.
It is regarded as a misfortune when a boy grows to manhood content to
live on the labor of others. With girls it has been otherwise. It has been
assumed that they would marry and be " supported " by competent husbands.
The only training necessary for them with this inevitable future before them
should be such as would fit them to be wives, mothers, and housekeepers —
" sweet dependents," held perpetually in " soft subjection." The practical
working of this theory has weighted women with heavy disabilities, for many
men make neither good nor competent husbands. Many are incompetent,
others are invalids, some are dissolute and idle, and not a few are profligate
and entirely desert both wives and children. Many women who have hus-
bands find themselves compelled to aid in earning the means of living ;
many wives earn the entire livelihood of the whole family, the husband
included. Many women are widows, while an increasingly large number in
the Eastern and Middle States do not marry at all.
By the United States census of 1880, in the States of Alabama, Connect-
icut, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South
Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia — sixteen in all — women outnumber men.
This list includes the two largest States of the Union and it comprises
all of the original thirteen, except Delaware. In Massachusetts women
outnumber men by 70,000. If our present type of civilization remains
unchanged, the newer States will exhibit the same excess of women in their
population in the near or remote future. There are born into the world on
the average, taking one year with another, 106 boys to every 100 girls, as if
nature designed to maintain the equilibrium of the sexes, and so guard
society from demoralization. But the desolating wars of the world, drunk-
enness, and other ruinous excesses peculiar to men, and, at the present day,
the waste of lives consequent on the reckless and absorbing rush of men into
dangerous businesses in pursuit of wealth, are responsible for the fact that in
old and long-established communities women outnumber and outlive men. It
is evident, therefore, that a large number of women, millions, the world over,
have not married, because there are not men enough to marry them, and
that they must do their share of the world's work and in some way achieve
their own bread-winning. If untaught in any remunerative industry, lack-
132 International Council of Women.
ing in practical knowledge, and untrained in the forms of business, they
must suffer great hardships. If property comes to their possession, their
ignorance of affairs will make them an easy prey to the dishonest and
designing.
The old-time theory that " all men support all women " led to the enact-
ment of laws which gave all the earnings of the married woman to her hus-
hand ; in most instances gave him control of her property, always legal pos-
session of her person, and legal ownership of her minor children ; the right
to decide the location of their joint domicile ; the power, in short, to become
the arbiter of her fate ; while the husband, in return for the service rendered
him by the wife, was to give her such shelter, food, and clothing as was com-
patible with his means, or inclination. While the woman remained unmar-
ried and a minor, all her earnings belonged to her father, who did not hesi-
tate to demand and retain them. Usually, if she remained unmarried through
life, she continued to share the labors of her father's household without other
compensation than shelter, food, and clothing, as in the days of her minority,
sometimes receiving a meager stipend from her father's estate when he died.
Generally, however, the property of the father was left to the sons, with the
exception of the mother's right of dower, and the mother and sisters became
then the dependents of sons and brothers, as they had formerly been of the
father and husband. In some sections of the country this unjust and iniqui-
tous condition of things remains still unchanged.
When the early Woman Suffragists took their stand for a redress of the
wrongs of women, they used no vague or ambiguous language. As early as
1838 Angelina Grimke and Abby Kelly, who were the first women orators I
ever heard, uttered their protest against the wrongs of woman, from an anti-
slavery platform. They severely denounced the custom of society which
closed the doors of remunerative industries against women, and thereby con-
demned large numbers to abject dependence and compulsory poverty. Ten
years later, when the first Convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York,
an occasion commemorated by this week's International Conference,
women reiterated the protest and the denunciation, and demanded political
equality as a remedy for these wrongs. Two years later another Woman's
Convention was held in Worcester, Mass., and again there rang out the
demand for equal political rights for men and women, equal educational
opportunities, and *' partnership in the labors and gains, risks and remuner-
ations, of productive industry." It is impossible to-day to describe the fierce
outburst of ridicule with which the public received these demands. Press
and pulpit, legislatures and courts, public men and private citizens, society
and fashion, all hastened to wash their hands of these innovators, and to
label them with the opprobrious epithets so lavishly affixed to those who inau-
gurate a reform. A dozen years were spent in this severe pioneer work, and
then came the four years civil war. All reformatory work was temporarily
Industries. 133
suspended, for the nation then passed through a crucial experience, and the
issue of the fratricidal conflict was national life or death.
The transition of the country from peace to the tumult of war was appall-
ing and swift, but the regeneration of its women kept pace with it. They
lopped off superfluities, retrenched in expenditures, became deaf to the calls
of pleasure, and heeded not the mandates of fashion. Their work was that
of relief and philanthropy, and for the first time in the history of the world
the women of America developed a heavenly side to war. They cared for
the needy families of soldiers, nursed the sick in camp and the wounded
in hospitals, ministered to the dying in the rear of battle-fields, and kept full
to overflowing the channels of beneficence which extended from Northern
homes to the army at the front. For their multiform work they needed
immense sums of money, and now the latent business abilities of women
began to show themselves.
They came to Washington and competed with men for Government con-
tracts for the manufacture of army clothing, and obtained them. When
their accounts and their work were rigorously inspected by the War Depart-
ment they received commendation and not a word of criticism, and were
awarded larger contracts. They planned great money-making enterprises,
whose vastness of conception and good business management yielded millions
of dollars to be expended in the interest of sick and wounded soldiers. The last
two of the colossal sanitary fairs held in New York and Philadelphia yielded,
respectively, one million dollars and one million two hundred thousand
dollars. Women were the inspiration, the creators, the great energizing
force of these immense fairs, and also from first to last of the sanitary com-
mission. Said Dr. Bellows: "There was nothing wanting in the plans of
the women of the commission that business men commonly think peculiar to
their own methods." Men awoke to the consciousness that there were in
women possibilities and potencies of which they had never dreamed.
Clara Barton, doing clerical work in a department of the Government
and declining to receive compensation therefor, attracted no attention. But
Clara Barton in hospitals and on hospital transports, bringing order out of
chaos, hope out of despair, and holding death in abeyance; Clara Barton at
Andersonville, where 13,000 soldiers had yielded up life under the prolonged
horrors of a military prison, and had been ignominiously buried in long
trenches, uncared for, unnoted and unknown, attracted the attention and
aroused the gratitude of the nation. For she ordered the trenches opened,
the unknown dead exhumed and decently buried, each man in a separate
grave, with a headstone recording his name, his rank, and the date of his
death.
Anna Dickinson, in the Philadelphia Mint, working for a pittance and
making impassioned speeches on various occasions for the enslaved black
man, was regarded as a nuisance. But Anna Dickinson on the platform,
134 International Council of Women.
with impassioned speech and fervid moral earnestness, pleading the cause of
the slave and receiving $100 and $200 a night for the service; Anna Dick-
inson in the Connecticut and New Hampshire Republican campaigns, thrill-
ing both States with her eloquent utterances, the acknowledged power that
won the victory in both for the Republican party, became the heroine of the
hour, and was hailed as the Joan d'Arc of the nineteenth century.
The development of those years and the impetus given to women by the
swift logic of events, which has not yet spent itself, has been wonderfully
manifested. Since the great quickening in 1861 women have organized mis-
sionary, philanthropic, temperance, educational, and political associations
on a scale of vast magnitude. Without much blowing of trumpets or un-
seemly boasting they have overcome almost insuperable obstacles, have
brought business abilities to the management of theiraffairs, and have achieved
phenomenal success. Their capacity for public affairs receives large recog-
nition at the present time, and they are elected or appointed to such offices
as those of county clerk, register of deeds, pension agent, prison commis-
sioner, State librarian, overseer of the poor, school superintendent and
supervisor. They serve as executors and administrators of estates, trustees
and guardians of property, trusts, and children, engrossing-clerks of State
legislatures, superintendents of women's State prisons, college presidents
and professors, members of boards of State charities, lunacy, and correction,
police matrons, and post-mistresses. They are accountants, pharmacists,
cashiers, telegraphers, stenographers, type - writers, chemists, dentists,
book-keepers, authors, journalists, painters, architects, and sculptors.
And the last statue of Anne Whitney, unveiled in Boston a few months ago,
the ideal statue of the Norseman Leif, the son of Eric, is regarded by many
competent critics as the most, exquisite work of art that has come from the
studio of any American sculptor. In many of these positions women serve
with men, who graciously acknowledge the practical wisdom that they bring
to their duties. "And although many women have been appointed to posi-
tions in departments of Government, and to important employments and
trusts," said Senator Blair, of New Hampshire, from his seat in Con-
gress, "as far as your committee are aware, no charge of incompetence or
malfeasance in office has ever been sustained against a woman."
With the progress of the modern industrial system there appears to be no
limit to the opportunities of women. Only a little over a quarter of a cen-
tury ago women were allowed to enter very few remunerative occupations.
In 1840, when Harriet Martineau visited this country to study its insti-
tutions, that she might be able to forecast the type of civilization to be
evolved from them, she especially investigated the position of women in the
young republic. She was surprised to find them occupying a very sub-
ordinate position in a country calling itself free, and to find they had
entered only seven paying occupations. They were allowed to teach, to be
Industries. 135
seamstresses, which included tailoring, dress-making, and millinery ; they
could keep boarding-houses, enter domestic service, become operatives in
factories, compositors in printing offices, and folders and stitchers in book-
binderies. The last United States census gives the names of nearly three
hundred employments in which women are working. The women of the
State of Massachusetts are working in 284 occupations, and 251,158 are
earning their living in them, receiving for their labor annually from $150
to $3,000. This computation does not include amateurs, nor mothers and
daughters in the household, and excludes domestic service.
So important a class are the working women of Boston that Hon. Carroll
D. Wright, Chief of the Massachusetts and of the National Bureau of Sta-
tistics of Labor, devoted 134 pages of his Fifteenth Annual Massachusetts
Report, published in 1884, to a consideration of the 20,000 women of the
city employed in occupations other than domestic service. He instituted a
most thorough and searching investigation to ascertain their normal, sanitary,
physical, and economical condition. Taking an average thousand of these
workers as a number amply sufficient for the scientific purposes of the inves-
tigation, he learned their personal histories, and from these deduced tabulated
statements of great value, which startled the whole community. For he
proved to us by figures, which are said not to lie, that " the average yearly
income of the working woman of Boston from all sources is $269.07, and
that her average yearly expenses for positive needs are $261.30, leaving but
$7.77 on the average as a margin for occasions of illness, religious purposes,
books, amusements, etc." In his summary of facts Mr. Wright assures us
that " the working girls of Boston are, as a class, industrious and virtuous ;
that they are making a heroic struggle against many obstacles and in the face
of peculiar temptations to maintain reputable lives, and are entitled to the
aid, sympathy, and respect of all who love good order, honest lives, and
industrious habits." I have no doubt a similar investigation into the lives of
the working women of other cities would reveal a similar condition of things.
It is the popular belief that women have hardly entered the field of inven-
tion. In a late magazine article written by one of the ablest and noblest
women the statement was made that "only 334 patents had ever been issued
to women, and these were mostly for articles of household use." But Mr.
R. C. Gill, who has been in charge of the model hall in the Patent Office
since 1871, has made a record of female inventors who have obtained
letters patent from the United States. The record is complete to December
14, 1 886, up to which date "women had taken out patents for 1,935 inventions,
six times the number usually quoted." Mr. Gill's record shows that "there
is no branch of industry in which woman has not left proof of her mechanical
skill." The first patent granted by the United States for a submarine telescope
was issued to a woman in 1845. Women have received letters patent for fire-
escapes, a life-preserver skirt, life-boats, and life-rafts, and for improvements
136 International Council of Women.
in boot and shoe making. They have patented machines for " driving bar-
rel-hoops, a steam-generator, a baling-press, a steam and fume box, an auto-
matic floor for elevator shafts, a rail for street railways, an electrical illumi-
nating apparatus, a railway-car safety apparatus, packing for piston rods, car
coupling, electric battery, improvement in locomotive wheels, materials for
packing journals and bearings, machine for drilling gun-stocks, a stock car,
an apparatus for destroying vegetation on railways, another for removing
snow from the tracks, a non-inductive electric cable, an apparatus for rais-
ing sunken vessels, a dredging machine, a method of constructing screw
propellers, improvements in locomotive and other chimneys, a railway tie, a
covering for the slot of elevated railways, and a device for deadening the
sound on elevated railways." The farmers, of whom there are many, have
taken out patents for a grain elevator, several varieties of fences (one of
them a flood-fence), a grain and cockle separator, a grain and malt drier, a
reaping and mowing machine, a mode of protecting fruit trees from curculio,
several improvements for harness, wagons, and carriages, a cotton picker,
cow-milkers, detachable spouts for milk-pails, butter-tubs, churns, bee-hives,
a machine for manufacturing honey-comb foundations, a bee-feeding device,
and many more of a similar nature. In 1879 Harriet Hosmer, the dis-
tinguished sculptor, patented a method of making artificial marble.
In the higher civilization, which is our ideal, and of which we dream,
every man who chooses will have a wife, and every woman a husband. The
husband will be the bread-winner and the wife the bread-maker — the artist
in the shaping and rearing of well-born children. Then will human father-
hood and motherhood take on something of the tenderness, fullness, and
divineness of Godhead, and then will "statelier Eden come again to man."
The civilized nations of the world are entering an age of industrial con-
flict, where the struggle for national supremacy will be as hotly contested as
it has been on any of the battle-fields of history. " The epic poem of the
future," says Carlyle, "shall not begin like that of Virgil, • Arms and the
man I sing,' but 'Tools and the man (and woman) I sing.' " Soldiers are,
to be sure, still drilled in the camps, but children and youth are also being
trained in industrial art in schools of design and normal art schools, and
in industrial drawing in the public schools. The days of chivalry are over,
with its tilts and tournaments, but the working world arranges the tourna-
ments of to-day, and summons the competing peoples to bring together the
results of their skilled workmen and women, now to an exposition in Lon-
don and then in Vienna, now in Philadelphia and then in Paris.
The ancient commercial dimensions of the earth are swept away forever,
and competition is now world-wide. This will compel the thorough train-
ing of American working people in industrial education, based on art and
science. We need technical schools as we find them in the Old World,
abundant and open alike to old and young, rich and poor, and as ff ^ to
fa
ersitt;
Industries. ^^0-
women as to men. They should be supplemented bym"usenms of a high
order, which will raise the standard of taste and stimulate to higher attain-
ments. "Never will women have social equity till they have legal equal-
ity," said the good and just Canon Kingsley, a truth as fundamental as
that which underlies the Golden Rule. Therefore, to working women, as
indeed to all women, the ballot is a necessity. It is the only synonym of
legal equality that a republican government can know.
Above all, at the present time, should women cultivate what they griev-
ously lack, a fine esprit de corps. They should stand together in a solidarity
that can not be shaken by difference of opinion, nor weakened by jealousy,
nor undermined by the cruel gossip and scandal of the world. "Any stone
is good enough to throw at a dog," says Frances Power Cobbe, " and there
is yet a spirit in the world that regards any slur, inuendo, or hint of base-
ness as legitimate if uttered concerning a woman." "The woman Thou
gavest me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat," is still the pitiful plea of the
shirk and the coward. It should not be echoed by women, nor exalted by
them to the dignity of an accusation. I lack language in which to express
-my sense of reprobation of the course pursued by those women who, from
their soft and easy homes, where they are anchored in the love of manly
husbands, enter the arena of public life only to beat back their sisters who
seek larger opportunities than suffice for themselves ; who make their own
opinions and wishes the measure of all women's needs, and cry out to legis-
latures and courts, parliaments and congresses : " Hold, enough ! Concede
to women no more of their demands, for we have all the rights we want! "
" Whene'er a wrong is done
To the humblest and the weakest 'neath the all-beholding sun.
That wrong is also done to us, and they are slaves most base,
Whose love of right is for themselves, and not for all the race."
The Chairman, Mrs. Johns. We have with us one who will tell us what
has been done in the Grange for equal suffrage in the government of this
organization — Anna M. Worden, Worthy Master of Vineland Grange, No.
ii, who will now address you.
WOMEN IN THE GRANGE.
Anna M. Worden. After the addresses listened to from this platform
perhaps you will consider the paper I present this morning a mere bundle of
commonplaces, but the lives of working people are largely made up of com-
monplaces, and as I represent a class of women hitherto looked upon as the
most obscure, you will pardon me, for, if I speak of women in the Grange, I
must refer to women on the farm.
The limit of this paper will not permit a history of the Grange, nor is it
needful, since you must know that it is the farmer's secret order, "organized
as Patrons of Husbandry for purposes of mutual defense and protection. It
has been styled the farmer's war upon monopoly, but it is more than that, it
is the farmer's hunger after a higher life, an awakened longing for the
10
138 International Council of Women.
refinements and opportunities that invariably follow justly compensated
labor.1 True, it is an outgrowth of the farmer's general movement against
the extortionate actions of transportation companies and the greed of
middle men who robbed him in every market. E. W. Martin, the his-
torian of the movement, says in his preface: " It has long been evident to
earnest thinkers that the farmers of the United States are the most cruelly
oppressed class of our community, and yet they are more than fifty per cent,
of the whole population. More than that, agriculture is the life of the
world, because it produces the food. Destroy it, and commerce, trade,,
manufactures, art, science, and our religion must languish and die. The
farmer's hand may be hard and brown, but it ' holds the bread,' and there-
fore the cause of the farmer is the cause of the whole people."
Recognizing the fact that financial prosperity is the basis of all prosperity,,
this compact of the farmers nevertheless puts the higher law of moral and
intellectual progress in advance. In the declaration of purposes the first
proposition is, " United by the strong and faithful tie of agriculture, we
mutually resolve to labor for the good of our order, our country and man-
kind." Their motto is: " In essentials, unity ; in non-essentials, liberty;
in all things, charity." "We shall endeavor to develop a higher and
better manhood and womanhood among ourselves ; to enhance the com-
forts and attractions of our homes, and strengthen our attachments to our
pursuits ; to foster mutual understanding and co-operation ; to maintain
inviolate our laws; to systematize our work ; to discountenance the credit
system, the mortgage system, the fashion system, and any other system tend-
ing to prodigality and bankruptcy." Education, economy in expenditure,
respect for differing opinions, equality, equity, and fairness, protection for
the weak, restraint upon the strong, justly distributed burdens, and justly
distributed power, are all touched upon in this " declaration of purposes,"'
which deserves to rank with that other declaration, in which men pledged
their " lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor."
Into this order, which " wages no aggressive warfare with any other inter-
est," asking only its just rights, was woman admitted to full membership ;
indeed, she was welcomed, for, says the historian, "every husband and
brother knows that where he can take wife or sister there will be no im-
purity." Full membership was not designed at first, but was suggested by
Miss C. A. Hall, subsequently first lady assistant steward and first past
assistant secretary of the National Grange. In the Grange woman is eli-
gible to every office, except that of steward, but holds the office of lady as-
sistant, to which no man is eligible.
No class of our population is so debarred from the advantages of social
life or the educational opportunities which obtain in villages, and populous
centers of business as the farming. The lecture, the concert, the strolling
play, often a genuine help, can not be easily indulged in by dwellers on
Industries. 139
isolated farms. Add to this the fact that agriculture involves more hours of
hard, grinding toil — the soil often yielding but a grudging recompense —
than any other profession ; is it any wonder that farmers have been and still
are looked upon in many quarters as ignorant and boorish ? We know there
are exceptions to all rules ; that there are and always have been exceptional
farmers' with exceptional advantages.
And if the farmer's opportunities are limited and his toil most exact-
ing, what must be said of the farmer's wife and daughters? Men lead
everywhere, women follow; men appropriate; women, especially among
the working people, accept what is given. Women on the farms toil
early and late with an intensity of application, of which the favored
daughters of wealth or society can have no conception. I know whereof
I speak, for I am a farmer's daughter, and can remember the mothers
on the farms — and my mother was one of them — used to rise at 4 in the
morning almost the entire year, and 11 at night rarely found them at rest.
Often with a large family, generally of children and workmen, with more
or less of a dairy, with aged parents to be comforted and sustained through
second childhood, the older children to be kept in school, with still tinier
hands clinging to her skirts, and infant wants to be answered, with a thou-
sand and one household matters to look after, often with no help but the
little hands, with no changes to vary the monotony of her daily toil, unless
it might be, if she chose, a long, tiresome walk to church, for the horses
must rest on Sunday, or a half-yearly visit to the nearest market town, is it
surprising that the farmer's wife should grow sad and desponding ? Did she
love flowers she had no time to cultivate them, and must be content with the
yearly display of fruit-blossoms and roses and lilacs that perchance grace a
corner of the kitchen garden. Did she love reading? There was the Bible,
Watts's Hymns, a Charlotte Temple, and mayhap some history of Indian or
French war ; perhaps a weekly political paper. Perhaps for weeks she fol-
lowed this dull round of toil without seeing a neighbor, for they were all as
busy as herself.
Is it strange that many, ere they reached their meridian, fell out of the
ranks of the living ? New England — aye, and the world, for that matter — is
dotted all over with the graves of women who have died, if not of work, of spir-
itual repression, and made no sign. It has recently been asserted in medical
circles that no class furnished so many inmates to the insane asylum as the
farmers' wives. If the intense toil, the monotony of farm life, the absence
of social interchange of thought or recreation, the need of intellectual uplift-
ing have so serious an effect upon the mothers, what must their influence be
upon her offspring? In an address some years ago, Colonel Forney, of the
Philadelphia Press, lamented that the " mothers of to-day do not work as
hard as the mothers of the past." I said, in my heart, thank God if they
do not, for numberless children have been defrauded of their natural right
140 International Council of Women.
to be born with sound minds in sound bodies by the overwork and mental
repression of their mothers !
To such women, hungry for society, thirsting for intellectual culture and
mental stimuli, the Grange has appeared a white-robed evangel, bearing hope
and healing, lifting the burdens of life, and offering to their acceptance ac-
tivity that are not all toil nor all duty. " The declaration that no Grange,"
s#yf"Mrs. M. F. Kimball, of California, "shall be organized or exist with-
out woman, was the emancipation of the women of the farm." The same
writer further says, " the limitless opportunities the Grange presents to women,
if seized upon, may convert, by social contact, the isolated farm-house into
a charmed resting place, where youth and age may find pure pleasures and
more satisfying enjoyments than the busy centers of life afford."
Of the opportunities for education in the Grange, one prominent factor
is debate. We are not limited in the field of discussion, except we are de-
nied party politics and religious sectarianism. The whole field of morals,
science, and government is open to our choice, and all the great questions
of the day engage our attention — temperance, internal revenue, the tariff,
all domestic affairs, the economies of home and home keeping, the chemis-
try of cooking, the training of children, the cultivation of flowers, beside
many topics related only to out-door work, in all of which women take a
deep interest. Indeed we are coming to like political economy, and by the
time the suffrage is permitted us the farmers' wives and daughters will use
the ballot judiciously. Something more than a year since R. H. Thomas,
editor of the Farmers' Friend, organized the Patrons' National Reading
Circle, after the manner of the Chautauqua Circles. I see by a slip from the
lecturer's department of the National Grange that in New England alone
they have 750 reading circles, independent, perhaps, of the National. In
addition to the foregoing, the National Grange issues a great mass of excel-
lent reading matter in the shape of slips, sheets, and tracts, which are dis-
tributed, by means of appropriations by the State Granges, to the subor-
dinate Granges.
Another attractive feature is the public meeting, in which women take an
active part. In our own Grange we have held them monthly. In winter
we invite the public into our hall to listen to addresses by the brothers,
essays written by the sisters, and readings and recitations by the young peo-
ple and children, interspersed with music and singing. Not unfrequently
we engage some lecturer to occupy the platform. In summer our meeting
becomes a "harvest feast," and is the farmers' picnic, held on different
farms, sometimes involving a long ride through the country, amid bloom
and bird-song, and usually chosen with reference to the facilities for
dining in the open air. Here woman presides, and her culinary arts are
discussed — experiments and experiences exchanged. These are red-letter
days to the little folks, and racy, social seasons to the elders. Another
Industries. 141
educating force in the Grange is office-holding, the value of which is not to
be computed. It teaches practical lessons of watchfulness, discipline, order.
We make familiar acquaintance with methods of business that are invaluable,
study parliamentary usage, learn to conduct meetings, to trust our own
voices, and to understand and value individual opinion. Mrs. Augusta
Cooper Bristol, well known as an able and eloquent speaker, averred
emphatically she never could have attained her present position but for
the inspiration of the Grange, which is quick to recognize individual
ability, to encourage its improvement, and to give it the best opportunity.
Still another attractive feature of the Grange is the co-operative, under
which we mass our orders for goods of any description and buy in bulk,
whereby we greatly increase the purchasing power of means oftentimes
limited ; and, as the purchasing power increases, the comforts and attrac-
tions of our homes increase. For, as Mrs. Flora M. Kimball says, " the pivot
on which all our interest turns is home." It is the center of the world's
thought, the leading object of humanity's ambition and love.
The slumbering genius of a hundred thousand women has been awakened,
and the papers bring us news that from one end of our grand Republic to ,
the other the pen of the farmers' wives and daughters is busy : their voices
are heard in advocacy of those principles that made our order a necessity ;
their influence is felt in the cause of temperance and moral reform. We
hear of her in county councils with timely words of wisdom ; in Grange
anniversaries, with addresses and poems instilling new life into the order,
and with a happy felicity embellishing the practical routine duties of the
hour. To woman the Grange is an educator in a way that no other
society ever attempted. Mrs. C. Y. Herring, of Maine, writes: "The
good of our country is what we are to labor for; not for combinations
that may exist ; not for some particular policy or man or set of men.
Believing that individual happiness depends upon general prosperity,
we will labor on in faith and hope for the good of our order, our country,
and mankind, exercising charity and fidelity in all the relations of life, with
our faces to the future, ready to act in progressive movements that are con-
tinually coming to the front. We can maintain our life and usefulness only
through onward activity; we can not live on the past. Orders that must
point the index-finger backward are on the road to decay. Neither can we
remain stationary; it is not in the nature of things. Then onward may the
Grange move ; be strong and of a good courage, for the ' Lord our God is
with us.' " Mrs. Sherman Kimberly, of Connecticut, writes : "Woman's
character differs somewhat from man's, and wherever she goes she takes with
her a home influence. It is a part of her mission to make all places where
her feet tread like home, and she is making each subordinate Grange home-
like. She is making it a place where purity and refinement prevail, the
graces and virtues flourish, love, kindness and tenderness dwell. The Grange
142 International Council of Women.
is indeed doing much for women. In it man invite's her to stand by his
side on the same level with himself, his friend, his counsellor, his co-worker,
and opens to her all the. joys of extended social intercourse and all the
avenues to knowledge and usefulness." These are voices from the farms
which might be multiplied indefinitely. They are the embodied~lhoughts
of women who attend to all the multitudinous details of good housekeeping.
They are women who can compose a poem or an essay over the ironing-
board, or arrange a public meeting while they watch the dinner — imagina-
tive women who hear a Miserere in the whispering pines, a Te Deum in
every bird-song — sweet, motherly souls who can soothe the infant's wail or
speed the departing spirit on wings of prayer or song.
When I think of the net-work of thousands of Granges girdling the con-
tinent from ocean to ocean, and from the lakes to the gulf, reaching tender,
helpful, uplifting hands toward each other, I am sure the race is rising to
purer living. Why, it only needs the strict, practical teaching of the tem-
perance principles of this order to make in a single generation a marked
change. In addition to its temperance principles the Grange is an advocate
of peace. Its methods, its proclivities, its tastes, and its pursuits are all
peaceful. Under its benign, uplifting influence who can tell what woman
may not accomplish for the race? Surely no education in science, religion,
morals, or politics need be lost to the mother. She will not love her home
less, but more, for it is growing beautifully fair under her enlightened min-
istrations. Sure I am she is fast transforming this boorish farmer — this butt
of editorial comment, " with hayseed in his hair" — who has so courageously
built a royal highway for her feet, into that prince of nature's noblemen — a
just and generous gentleman. Yes, a gentleman ; a bold, invincible cru-
sader as well. He is awakening to the sense of his own value as the food-
producer — to a knowledge of his wrongs. He is beginning to know he has
been robbed in all the ages, and that through the evolution of those ages his
hour must come.
To be sure he wears no glove, but the hand within is mailed. Mailed in a
stern loyalty to right, in a patriotic love of free government, in honest,
truthful dealing, man with man, and in a sterling understanding of the prin-
ciple and claims of eternal justice. I see him down the vistas of the future
battling with wrong, searching out every scheme of corruption and rob-
bery, every compact, of oppression, while behind him glows his fireside,
radiant in perpetual beauty. All honor to the Grange; its founders " builded
better than they knew," when they said to women, ** Come upon our
platform and share our warfare and its attainments." Esio perpetua.
Mrs. Johns. I present to you Hulda B. Loud, who represents the Knights
of Labor, that organization in which the men have learned that their own
best interests can not be built upon the wreck of woman's equal chances to
gain independence.
Industries. 143
Miss Loud. Knights of Labor must have a harsh, unpleasant sound to
most of you fine ladies assembled here to-day, for with this order and similar
ones is associated all the disorder that has existed in our country, since the
days of the great civil war. And yet this is pre-eminently the field for a
wo\nan, since woman's conservatism is necessary to bring together the ex-
tremes of capital and labor, now seemingly growing wider and wider apart
every day. Robert Grant, in his novel, " Face to Face," commits the solu-
tion of this labor problem to a woman, and she gives the answer. And,
when men have learned to value a woman's counsel, a peaceful solution
will be possible. Not because women are better than men — I never
make that claim — but because women are the complements of men, each
necessary to the other, and both necessary to a successful solution of all of
life's problems. The danger is, the men will hold to their own sweet will
till revolution brings its bloody lesson to point the way.
There is a woman in a town not far from Boston, of a strong character,
quick intuitions, and great legal acumen, who, not long ago, brought a strike
to a speedy and successful settlement. She was secretary of the local exec-
utive board and acted in her official capacity. She saw at once that the
manufacturer had been careless of the interests of his employes, and that the
men had been hasty in their action ; and so she saw at once that they should
be brought together in order that they might become acquainted with each
other. The manufacturer gained an advantage in his opening, and she came
very near effecting a settlement right then and there, but by an indiscre-
tion— a little tyranny, the tyranny that always comes of power — he lost a
part of the advantage. He, however, offered to make amends the next day
"by submitting it to the State board of arbitration. One of the leaders of
the strikers came to this woman and asked her concerning the advisability of
submitting it to the State board. "By all means, do so," she said. " I
know the members of the board well enough to know that you will be per-
fectly satisfied with their decision." It was submitted, and the decision was
satisfactory to both employers and employees, and no difficulty has occurred
in that factory since that time.
What do you suppose was that woman's reward ? Why, at the next election
of officers she was left off the executive board. The men, the leaders, were
jealous of her power. In the ordinary affairs of life men are not jealous
of women, but, when it comes to place and power, human frailty, male or
female, pushes all obstacles to self-advancement one side, and will do so
while selfishness is the main-spring of human action. One of the women of
Massachusetts who speaks occasionally on the public platform, in connection
with one of the members of the district executive board spoke one evening
in a factory town. The next day this member of the board went to see the
superintendent of the mills concerning one of his operatives, a young girl
who had a grievance. The superintendent' would not see him as a committee
144 International Council of Women.
of the Knights of Labor, but would speak with him as an individual. He
accomplished nothing. This woman visited the mills in the forenoon, andr
as she was about to leave them, she was introduced to the superintendent in
the general office. He invited her to his private office, where she talked to
him and an associate superintendent for two hours on the general subject
of labor, and also concerning the reinstatement of this girl. She went directly
from the mills to the house of this girl, and advised her, as it was evident
to her that the girl had been hasty, to go down that afternoon to see
the superintendent, telling her that she felt sure that she would be reinstated.
She did so, and was reinstated ; and so a woman with her tact had accom-
plished what an official of the order, whose business it was to look after
such cases, had failed to do. District Assembly No. 30 of Massachusetts
is now a State association, but has been so only a short time. Two years
ago it was the largest and richest district in the order, numbering some
115,000 members, about 5 per cent, of whom were women. These women
are mostly from the shoe industry, in which the most enlightenment pre-
vails. The most intelligent working men and women are in labor organiza-
tions; the ignorant you find in anarchy and revolution. Many of these
women are from the middle classes, for the shoe industry is the best paid in,
the United States. I mean those industries employing any considerable
number of operatives. They are earnest and enthusiastic in this work of
labor elevation. They are slowly coming to a realizing sense of their own
worth as individuals, and when I talk to them of women's political rights-
they listen with attention, though the whole current of their lives has been
far removed from any thought of this kind. They are holding office in.
their own female assemblies, and also in mixed assemblies, since in social
and political privileges our order recognizes no distinction of sex. And
they are beginning to question, if it is right to speak, vote, and hold office
in these assemblies, why is it wrong to do so in the State? "A little learn-
ing," you see, "is a dangerous thing." When men allowed women to
learn the alphabet they gave up the whole case.
When I speak to labor audiences I give prominence to the Henry George
land theory as an important factor in the solution of this labor problem.
And, after I had spoken <in Ware, Mass., a factory town, the girls formed a
Woman's Reading Club, for the purpose of studying labor literature, espe-
cially the Henry George land theory. These women, you1 must remember,
are, ninety-nine hundredths of them, without education or culture; but they
are, nevertheless, anxious to learn, and so thoughtful is this labor agitation
making them that I consider this the most hopeful field there is for the ad-
vance of woman-suffrage ideas, for here you have the masses easy to mould,
and here alone can you reach them.
I Women have been appointed on committees in District Assembly No. 30,.
and I think a woman could have been elected to the executive board if the.
Industries. 145
right one had been willing to allow the use of her name. And yet there are
not enough offices to go around among the men, and that might have mili-
tated against her success. In the scramble for power, outside as well as
inside of the Knights of Labor, no position of importance to the men will
come to the women. One of the most ardent of our order, a man who thinks
that woman suffrage is the principle working through the human race that is
to bring the kingdom of heaven upon earth, when I was advocating the elec-
tion of a woman to the executive board, said : " It is not a fit place for a
woman." '/ Then," I replied, " it's time for a woman to go down there and
make it fit." He was himself an aspirant for that same position at that time,
and his ambition overcame his sense of justice. I question, however, if, in
the analysis of his thought, he would be aware how great weight this selfish
consideration had with him.
It will be a long day before many men will attain the grandeur of char-
acter manifest in John Stuart Mill in his dedication of his great work on
" Liberty." You remember it — the tribute to his wife : "To her who was
the inspirer, and, in part, the author, of all that is best in my works, I ded-
icate this book." Most men feel humiliated to owe their greatness to
a woman, and yet most men do. This is, without doubt, the principal
reason why women hold none of the offices in District Assembly 30. They
are not urged by the men, and woman, from her very nature or education —
it is hard to tell which in the present cramped condition of her faculties —
Waits for this urging, and, by her timidity, impairs somewhat her use-
fulness. In my own assembly of 1,000 members, about 200 of whom
are women, women have held important offices, but have declined to serve
further. There are, however, women who are fitted to rule in politics, and
their claims should be recognized, and will be, as woman advances towards — •
not out of, as is generally considered the case — " her proper sphere." Mrs.
Barry, delegate from the Knights of Labor, will, no doubt, give you evidence
of woman's official recognition outside of District Assembly 30, as there are.
many notable instances. One, a woman of Chicago, has been master
workman of a large mixed district in that city.
The Knights of Labor is the grandest educational force in the whole world
to-day. It is the barrier that protects capital and monopoly from the results
of their folly and crime. Most of you present here are students of his-
tory, and have read Edmund Burke on the French Revolution, where you
see the Bastile, Robespierre, and the bloody guillotine. But I ask you to
read the other side. Read Thomas Payne, who wrote for the people, and
gave a copyright of his "Crisis" and " The Rights of Man " to every State in
the Union 5 always the friend of the people. " Thousands perished by the
bloody guillotine alone ;' most horrible reflection," you say. Millions per-
ished from starvation, millions for centuries endured a living death to sup-
port in luxury u debauched nobility, and above the wail of want and misery
146 International Council of Women.
not one single voice was ever heard to penetrate the royal adamantine walls.
You can not wholly put out the smouldering fires of justice in the human
heart. You may prevent their outbreak for centuries. Meantime you sleep
on a volcano.
This labor question is the most important one before the people to-day,
and I ask you to consider it in the light of its basic principles — fraternity,
the concern of all, universal brotherhood — and not in the light of volcanic
eruptions, strikes, and riots which occur in spite of us, which are but symp-
toms of a disease that must have vent, the root of which we should reach by
education. Labor organizations are the safety-valves of the discontent of
the masses, that will continue while poverty exists and while there remains
a wrong to be righted. Everywhere we should encourage these organizations
and seek, by wise counsel, to direct their efforts. Outside of labor organi-
zations you have anarchy and revolution. In Germany, Heinrich Heine
voices the discontent of the masses in the following pitiful wail:
" With^tearless eyes, in despair and gloom,
Gnashing their teeth, they sit at the loom:
' Thy shroud we weave, O Germany old !
We weave into it a curse threefold;
We're weaving, weaving, weaving.' "
And this weaving is going on all over the world, while those best able to
lend a helping hand stand by unmoved. I know the voice of warning is
considered incendiary speech, but history teaches you that she alone who
raises the note of alarm in time of peace is the true friend of mankind. And
I say to you, in closing, capital must meet labor on the broad ground of
common humanity, in the spirit of true fraternity, or the "curse of Ger-
many of old " will be woven into our republican institutions, and over the
republican experiment in America will be written "Failure." It must be
labor organization or revolution.
Mrs. Johns. Helen Campbell, Vice-President of the Sociologic Society
of America, who is now in France, sends us a valuable paper.
THE WORKING WOMEN OF TO-DAY.
A desire to know how far certain special advance for women touched the
general, whether the breaking of mental and spiritual bonds for the better
class had meant enlightenment in equal proportion for the one below, and
how far the desire for larger life had colored the thought of the average
worker, led me in the autumn of 1886 into researches among the working
women of New York. This search continued there for the greater part of a
year, and resulted in the discovery of facts which, though old, are also new,
since their existence is periodically denied and periodically requires fresh
demonstration. Even those most accustomed to face the dark side of life
feel involuntarily that things must be better than individual experience
would lead them to believe, and that the want and misery coming now and
then to the surface mean simply a temporary condition in which the real
workers have no share, and which can easily be accounted for by phrases we
Industries. 147
all know: "Congestion of labor, overcrowding of cities," etc. Aside
from this, the conviction rules that women have never been so well paid or so
comfortable, the condition of trade and the various occupations open to them
bettering with every year.
Such conviction may be taken as quite true for one side of the statement.
Opportunity is larger, and the 200,000 women at work in the city of New
York, like other thousands in other cities, have open to them nearly one hun-
dred trades as against a fifth of that number a generation ago. The better-
paying trades are filled with women who have had some form of training in
school or home, or have passed from one occupation to another till that for
which they had most aptitude has been determined. The more helpless turn
at once to this one thing about which there is no hesitation, and in the needle
find their protection against starvation. That the needle is less and less a
weapon of defense ; that the trades included in it, from dressmaking to shirt-
making, are overcrowded, underpaid, and their scale of payments lessen-
ing year by year, makes no difference. The girl too ignorant to reckon fig-
ures— too dull-witted to learn by observation — takes refuge in sewing as the
one thing possible to all grades of intelligence. The woman, too, with
drunken or vicious husband, more helpless, often, than the widow, seeks the
same source of employment. If respectably dressed and able to furnish some
reference, employment is found for her in some factory or large establish-
ment. But when fortune has sunk so low that the only clothing left is on
the back of the worker, comes the final stage of demoralization and the neces-
sity of dealing directly with the "sweater," whose methods are more or less
familiar to all who have studied the question of woman's work and wages.
Very shortly it became plain that for this class, a large and steadily in-
creasing number, the difficulties were fourfold ; 1st, her own incompetency
must very often head the list and prevent her from securing first-class work;
2d, middle-men or sweaters lower the price to starvation point : 3d, contract
work done in prisons or reformatories brings about the same result; and 4th, she
is under-bid from still another quarter, that of the country woman who takes
the work at any price. The best firms and the worst are alike affected by
these conditions, especially the last two, and all employees,, good or bad, are
divided into three classes, all of them subject to these general limitations. For
New York, there are the west-side firms which in many cases care for their
workmen in a degree at least, and where the work is done under conditions
that we must call favorable; the east-side firms representing generally cheaper
material and lower rates; and last, the slop work, which may be either east
or west, more often the former, and includes every form of outrage and
oppression that workers can know. Competition has sharpened wits till the
Christian has acquired every art of the Jew, and grinds his victims with a
composure born of the fact that they are merely parts of the great producing
machine.
148 International Council of Women.
As an illustration of some difficulties to be faced by our skilled workers,
I give a few of the methods practiced by a large firm on Canal street, whose
trade-mark is well known as the sign oC good work, and whose prosperity is
in always increasing ratio. Like many other firms, they had at first manu-
factured on the premises, but discovered that this was quite an unnecessary
expense. A roof over the heads of more than a hundred women, with space
for their machines, meant not less than $2,500 a year to be deducted from
the profits. The simple way out of this difficulty was to make the women
themselves pay the rent, not in any tangible imposition of tax, but none the
less certainly in fact. Nothing could be plainer. Manufacturing on the
premises had only to cease, and it could even be put as a favor to the
women that they were allowed to work at home. This rule was established
at once; and, having stopped this leak, they turned to fresh possibilities,
discovering at once another method. The women were told that hencefor-
ward all packages of work would be sent from the cutting-room direct at a
charge of only fifteen cents a package for express. A few of the bolder ones
remonstrated, saying they could come for theirs, but were silenced instantly
by a word they knew only too well. " There are plenty waiting to take our
terms if you don't like them. It suits us best to send the packages from
here."
In the meantime the firm arranged with the head of a small express con-
cern to deliver the goods at twelve cents a package, thus adding to the
weekly receipts a clear gain of three cents per head. Firm and ex-
pressman, it hardly need be said, played into each other's hands, the wagon-
drivers having no knowledge of anything beyond the fact that they were to
collect the fifteen cents and to turn them over to their superiors. In some
way the real state of the case became known, but no one dared remonstrate
any more than when, a few weeks later, it also leaked out that the firm
charged five cents a dozen more than it cost them, on the thread. Last, came
a change in the method of payment, which hitherto had been made at the
desk when work was brought in. Now checks were given on a Bowery bank,
and, in heat or storm alike, the women must walk over and wait their turn
in the long line on the benches, thus sacrificing from half an hour to an hour
of time, their only capital. As the case now stands, then, for this firm,
which represents the system adopted by many, the working woman not only
pays the rent that would be required for factory, but gives it a profit on
expressage, thread, time lost in going to bank, and often the price of a dozen
garments, payment for the dozen being deducted by many foremen if there
is a flaw in one. The foreman becomes the scapegoat if any questions are
asked, the usual statement being, if the women's difficulties are mentioned,
" Oh ! that was before the last foreman left ; we discharged him as soon as
we found out how he had served the women."
A favorite method, known to many firms, is advertising for women and
Industries. 149
girls to learn the trade. The applicant who comes in answer to such ad-
vertisement is anxious to learn at once, and gives her best intelligence to
mastering every detail. Into her first week she puts an energy of effort that
could hardly last, and often she is beguiled by small payments and large
promisestinto continuing weeks and even months, always expecting the always
delayed payment.
With the question of overtime ; of the determined and rooted prejudice
against substituting household service for the long hours at the machine ; of
the absolute ignorance of how to make the best and most of the scanty wages,
and to provide something more nourishing from it than the rank tea, boiled
to extract the last tinge of strength, and the baker's bread, most often but-
terless, I do not propose to speak. My business is simply to give you certain
phases of the case as it stands for the working woman in all our large cities,
with a glance at comparative conditions abroad. Naturally, the evils I have
specified press most hardly on the untrained workers, the woman of skill and
some education being fairly certain of a living. But competition has less-
ened the possibilities even for this woman, while for the grade below it has
brought wages to the lowest point of subsistence, and we face an army of
haggard, weary, hopeless wretches, too exhausted and depleted by long-
continued labor for progress.
The question for this order of worker is not for us alone, but for all civili-
zation. It had not seemed possible that the other side of the sea could
know anything so deplorable as the conditions that faced one in the attics
and basements of the tenement-house district in New York, and to know how
the case really stood, and if any advantage was on one side, it seemed neces-
sary to make the same search in London, and in some degree on the Con-
tinent. Six months in London have partially answered the question, and
writing to-day in Paris it is plain that, given all differences of national tem-
perament and custom, the story is practically the same for all. London is
the first consideration in such attempt, not only because it leads in numbers,
but because our own conditions are in many points an inheritance which
crossed the sea with the Pilgrims and is in every drop of Anglo-Saxon
blood.
It became certain in the beginning of the London experience, and time
simply confirmed the fact, that the English working woman has not only the
disabilities which her American sister faces — some inherent in herself and as
many arising from the press of the present system — but, added to this, the
apparent incapacity of the employers to see that she has rights of any de-
scription whatsoever. The factory act limiting time, and the various
attempts to legislate in behalf of women and children, strike the average
employer as gross interference with constitutional rights. Where he can, he
evades. Where he can not he is apt to grow purple over the impertinence
of meddling reformers who can not let well enough alone. He stands in
1 50 International Council of Women.
the way of all investigation, and nothing could well be more difficult than to
determine the actual position of the worker. In every trade, however, one
fact is at once clear, and that is that overtime is taken as a right, and any
protest against it is simply absurd. From 8 A. M. to 8 P. M. is the usual day,
stretching often to io o'clock, and this applies to every trade open to women,
while in many, if there is special press of work, the hours extend indefinitely,
a few houses giving from four to eight cents an hour for overtime. The wage
paid is in increase ratio to the hours required. A pound a week is regarded
as a fortune, and the majority of needle-women of the same grade as those
dealt with in the opening of this paper receive from eight to twelve shillings;
nor is there any indication that the scale will rise, or that better days are in
store for one of these toilers.
Here and there a spasmodic attempt is made to discover their actual con-
dition, but London has no statistics of labor in the sense of the admirable
work of our own State boards, all facts being locked up in almost inacces-
sible Blue Books. London, also, is far behind other cities in every point
affecting the well-being of operatives of every class. The great manufact-
uring cities of England are doing much to lighten oppressive conditions and
give some possibility of improvement. The attitude of the London em-
ployer is therefore all the more puzzling. It is marked by indifference to
a brutal degree, and wages are at the lowest and profits at the highest attain-
able point. It is true that he is driven by a force often quite beyond his
control — foreign competition, French and German, being no less sharp than
that on his own soil. He must study chances of profit to a farthing, and in
such study there is naturally small thought of his workers, save as hands in
which the farthings may be found. Many a woman goes to her place of
work leaving behind her children who have breakfasted with her on "kettle-
broth," and will be happy if the same is certain at supper time.
"There's six of us has had naught but kettle-broth for a fortnight," said
one. "You know what that is? It's half a quarter. loaf soaked in hot water
with a ha'p'orth of drippings and a spoonful of salt. When you've lived on
that night and morning for a week or two you can't help but long for a
change, though, God forgive me, there's them that fares worse. But wages
is down out of sight, and maybe it'll be the broth without the bread before
we're through. There's no living to be had in Old England any more, and
yet the rich folks don't want less. Do you know how it is ma'am ? Is there
any chance of better times, do you think ? Is it that they want us to starve ?
I've heard that said, but some how it seems as if there must be hearts still,
and they'll see soon, and then things '11 be different. Oh, yes! they must
be different."
Will they be different ? It is unskilled workers who have just spoken, but
do the skilled fare much better ? Here is a portion of a table of earnings
prepared a year or two since by the chaplain of the Clerkenwell Prison, an
Industries. 151
earnest missionary among the poor, this table ranking as one of the best of the
few attemps to discover the actual position of the working woman at present.
Making paper bags, 4^4d. to 5^d. per thousand; possible earnings, 5s.
to 9s. a week. Buttonholes, 3d. per dozen ; possible earnings, 8s. per
week. Shirts, 2d. each, worker finding her own cotton ; can get six done
between 6 A. M. and 11 P. M. Sack-sewing, 6d. for twenty-five, 8d. to is.
6d. per hundred ; possible earnings, 7s. per week. Pill-box making, is. for
thirty-six gross ; possible earnings, is. 3d. a day. Collar buttonhole mak-
ing, is. per dozen ; can do three or four dozen between 5 A. M. and dark.
Whip making, is. per dozen ; can do a dozen a day. Trouser finishing, 3d.
to 5d. each, finding own cotton ; can do four per day. Shirt finishing, 3d.
to 4d. per dozen. So the list runs on through all the trades open to women.
Nor is the outlook much better in sunny Paris, though the Frenchwoman
starves more smilingly than her London sister shrouded in fog. From
Germany, Belgium, Italy, and every country where women are at work,
comes the same wail, and the cry of the London toilers is the cry of all :
" There must be hearts, still, and they '11 see soon, and then things '11 be
different. Oh, yes, they must be different." Will they be different?
Never, unless we who come to freedom and knowledge and all that makes
life worth living know that no one of these possessions is truly ours unless
its possibility dawns also for these weak ones whose stumbling feet have yet
no path in which they may walk securely. I shall urge no method, apply no
precept of political economy. To each must be the action which seems just
to her own soul. But the laborer has fallen on evil days. The old joy in
labor is dead. Its resurrection can come only through us, who listen and
wonder, it may be, why philanthropy has not settled such questions ; and
if not philanthropy, then why not the State or the church ?
Not one nor all of these can do the needed work. It is a change of ideals
that is needed ; a simplification of all living ; a refusal to own any good
which can not be shared, and the solemn purpose to make larger life possi-
ble, not only for those who crave it, but for those who may even reject it.
It is because all are parts of one great whole that real progress will be impos-
sible till the new ideal reaches out to and enfolds all ; till competition and
the baseness born of it retreat to the shadow from whence they came, and
co-operation in its largest, noblest sense is the law of life — the fulfillment of
the old word spoken long ago, yet vital as in its first hour, "Bear ye one
another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." This was the word of
one who toiled with his own hands and ate only the fruit of his own labor ;
but side by side with it may stand the word of one whose simple nobleness
is also our lesson :
" But laying hands on another
To coin his labor and sweat,
He goes in pawn to his victim
For eternal years in debt."
152 International Council of Women.
Mrs. Johns. We have with us Mrs. Lita Barney Sayles, the General Sec-
retary of this Society, who is also editor of The Co-operative News of America.
"CO-OPERATION, THE LAW OF THE NEW CIVILIZATION."
Mrs. Sayles. I have the honor of presenting to this International Coun-
cil of Women a brief statement of the work and principles of the Sociologic
'Society of America. This organization dates from the spring of 1882. It
was formed exclusively by women, and had its inception in a course of par-
lor lectures given by its president, Mrs. Imogene C. Fales, of New York, on
" Industrial Co-operation." In addition to the usual officers of such socie-
ties this has a co-operation board and branch societies in various cities, its
headquarters being in New York. Its work is educational, and is carried
on by means of conferences, public and parlor meetings, and the dissemi-
nation of its principles by means of leaflets, correspondence, and the publi-
cation of a quarterly sheet, The Co-operative News of America.
The work is, however, no longer confined to women, but men practically
interested in various forms of co-operative industry have become mem-
bers, and are actively endeavoring to unite in a national co-operative board
the scattered, unrelated industries of the country. The movement contains
within itself the germs of an international alliance for the promotion of co-
operative organization and preservation of social peace. In pursuance of this
phase of the work the president, Mrs. Fales, visited England last May and
attended, as delegate from the American Co-operative Bo?rd, the Nineteenth
Annual Congress of the Co-operators of the United Kingdom. Her plea was
for a great educational system to propagate the principles of co-operation.
She was ably seconded in her efforts by M. de Boyve, who represented eighty-
five organized co-operative bodies of France. The congress was held at Car-
lisle, and was attended by over 590 delegates.
The result of thdse united efforts was the formation of an International
Co-operative Alliance, composed of representatives from the boards of En-
gland, France, Italy, and the United States. As an illustration of the success
of distributive co-operation, we point to the Rochdaje system, which was
inaugurated in England forty-four years ago by twenty-eight poor weavers.
The annual report of the chief register shows that 984 societies made official
returns to the central board in 1885, and that the membership of these soci-
eties was about 682,000, their sales for the year amounting to $424,000,000.
George Jacob Holyoake, in a recent letter, says: " Distributive co-operation
is well established and extending. Leeds, for instance, has about 20,000
members. It has so many branch stores and is so continually erecting new
ones that they keep a staff of builders, who move from place to place as new
stores have to be built. During the last twenty years the business done co-
operatively by workingmen in Great Britain is estimated at twelve hundred
and fifty millions of dollars, the profits of which, about one hundred million
dollars, have gone back into their own pockets."
Industries. 153
Out of the retail stores has grown the wholesale, with its trading capital of
nearly $4,000,000, and now productive co-operation, with the men as their
own employers, is developing naturally from these conditions. It is not
generally known that the most prosperous cotton-mills in Great Britain are
those run on co-operative principles at Oldham, with $27,000,000 of capital.
The outfit represents more spindles than there are in Russia, Italy, Spain,
and Austria, and nearly as many as in Germany and France.
Turn for a moment from the consideration of the economic to the moral
value of the co-operative principle. In the letter from Mr. Holyoake, above
referred to, he says : " When I first knew Rochdale, all the working people
needed relief. All who could get it had it, and the chief hope of others was
that the work-house might not be too full when their turn came. Now they
subscribe to the relief funds, to hospitals, present fountains to the town, and
in all things give like gentlemen. It is in this manner that co-operation, by
ameliorating social conditions, transforms the old civilization and brings in
a new order of things. Mindful of the old adage, " nothing succeeds like
success," the Sociologic Society seeks to show, by dwelling upon assured
facts in other countries, what can be done also in ours to lighten the burden
of life and institute better industrial and social conditions among the people.
It believes, with Thomas Hughes, that if co-operation in twenty-five years
made life easier for three millions of English people, should it not in fifty
years do this far more perfectly for ten millions, and that what may be done
for this number may, in time, be done for a nation?
The Sociologic Society of America is teaching the practical adaptation
of the Golden Rule to trade, and showing the results of peace and prosper-
ity that will necessarily flow therefrom ; that co-operation is the practical
•expression of the law of mutual helpfulness by which we are morally bound
to our neighbor, as it is a religious as well as an economic principle. That
social development is contingent upon individual development ; individual
development is through intellectual and moral activity, and these in turn
rest upon a physical basis, which demands, in order that life shall be prop-
erly sustained, a just compensation for labor. That the starting point,
therefore, of social reformation is the relations of capital and labor. The
basis of social life must be the moral law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself," which, economically expressed, is, "Thou shalt make thy neigh-
bor's interests identical with thine own."
Mrs. Johns. You will now be addressed by Leonora M. Barry, delegate
and organizer of the Knights of Labor, whose credentials are signed by Gen-
eral Master Workman T. V. Powderly.
WHAT THE KNiGHTS OF LABOR ARE DOING FOR WOMEN.
The Knights of Labor are a body of men organized for protection and
education, that they may be the better able to cope with the scheming
11 »
154 International Council of Women.
means resorted to by those who live upon the proceeds of their toil, and
subtract from labor so large a portion of labor's rights. The Knights of
Labor were organized openly in 1879. F°r several years they existed in
secrecy, because they feared that terrible weapon so unmercifully used
upon the employees — the black list. Fearing that, they kept many years,
in secret ; but after having become so compact and strong, after having
the gospel of the Knights of Labor taught from Maine to Oregon, from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, and over in the Old World, they then made known
their aims, which were to abolish poverty, to demand that moral and indus-
trial worth and not wealth be made the standard of national and individual
greatness. Those poor working men, the tin-pail brigade, the seventy-two
thousand miners of Pennsylvania, the hundreds and thousands of unskilled
workmen, those people recognized what your legislators, what your pulpits,,
what your press have failed to recognize within all the years of vour agita-
tion— woman's right to equitable consideration by the side of men in the na-
tion's government. Having recognized this, they inserted in the platform
of principles that plank which demands equal pay for equal work ; and ere
many more years have passed over our heads, there will be another plank
inserted not only in the platform of the Knights of Labor, but upon the
statute-books of our country, making it a criminal offense for any man to
dare employ a woman at less remuneration for labor than will enable her to
procure the comforts of life without necessitating temptation to sin. The
Knights of Labor are elevating the conditions of men ; teaching them self-
respect ; their duty to themselves and each other. We are building around
our working girls a wall of protection to defend them from the indignities
which heretofore they have been subjected to, such as making the price of
their honor the possibility of a place to earn their livelihood.
We are trying to teach the outside world that the working woman has
feelings, has sensitiveness, has her heart's longings and desires for the better
things of life, and any socialor industrial system or environment that pre-
vents woman from enjoying those gifts of a common Father must be broken,
because it is utterly false. Any condition of society that prevents woman
or child from cultivating the three elements of which humanity is composed —
the moral, physical, and mental — that state of society is false, and it becomes
the duty of every honest man and woman, I care not what their station in
life, to try to overturn it. There are no better law supporters, no more loyal
citizens true to the laws of their country and their country's flag than the
organized working men and women of to-day. They do not demand revo-
lution, but they do demand reform ; they do not ask it by the power of
physical force ; they do not ask it by the destruction of life or property ;
they simply ask it at the hands of the law-making bodies of their nation.
And as we, the people, are the law-making bodies, and those whom we send
to the legislative halls are but our servants, we, the women in the Knights-
Industries. 155
of Labor, are educating our men to know what the ballot means, not only
for the working man, but for the working man's wife and sister.
Seven years ago I was left without knowledge of business, without knowledge
of work, without knowledge of what the world was, with three fatherless
children looking to me for bread. To support these children it became
my duty to go out in the army of the employed and in one of the largest
factories in central New York. I went, and for four years and seven -months
remained a factory woman for the support of my little ones. Four years ago
this spring I became a Knight of Labor. I became a member of an as-
sembly of 1,500 women. Of those 1,500 women from the withdrawing of
what is called trades assembly — women of one particular trade or calling — I
became the master workman of an assembly of 927 women, ranging from
14 years of age to 60. And let me say to you here that although there was
not one amongst them could boast of more than a minor part of a common
school education, yet in that body of women there was more executive
ability, more tact, more shrewdness, more keen, calculating power than
could be found in twice that number of men in the United States.
I was sent from my assembly, composed entirely of women, to the District
Assembly, No. 65, which met in the city of Albany ; from that district I was
sent to Richmond, Va., a delegate to the General Assembly, and from there
I was sent into the world to educate my sister working women and the
public generally as to their needs and necessities. We are instituting
co-operative industries throughout the breadth and length of our land — the
industries in which women are engaged — taking those we find in the most
helpless condition, and from becoming operatives in those factories they
eventually become shareholders. In the city of Chicago, a tailoring estab-
lishment was started. A few girls were locked out because they went to a
labor parade. It was a breach of discipline, but they did not deserve so
severe a punishment. They came back, and by soliciting subscriptions by
every means in their power they raised $400, with $100 of which they paid
a month's rent and started with $3°° capital. Inside of nine months those '
few men and women in that co-operative tailoring establishment at 882 Fifth
avenue, Chicago, 111., have done $36,000 worth of business. We have our
co-operative shirt factories in Baltimore and New York, conducted solely by
women ; we have our collar and cuff factories in Waterford, N. Y. ; we have
our co-operative knitting mill at Little Falls, N. Y., and many other indus-
tries. And I am at this time negotiating with Nashville, Tenn., for the
institution of co-operative industry for the manufacture of women's and
children's underwear, at which our poor unfortunate sisters in New York
suffer more than can be imagined any human being might suffer under a slop-
shop system of work in New York city.
I have, during my connection with the organization, instituted what is
known as the Working Women's National Beneficial Fund. This gives to
156 International Council of Women.
women in sickness not less than $3 nor more than $5 per week, and in case
of death not less than $75 nor more than $100. It gives protection to every
woman, whether she be a Knight of Labor or not, for it is the duty, the aim,
and the object of Knights of Labor to elevate woman, no matter what
her nationality, her creed, her color, or her position in life. The Knights of
Labor are taking the little girls from the factory, the workshop, and the
mines, and educating them, because we know that the little child of to-day
is the mother of the future. As these are the children of to-day, and as
these shall be the working women of the future, we demand that they shall
be taken from the workshop, factory, and the mine and put into the school-
rooms to be educated. If there is any one State for which I might make a
special plea it is that monopoly-bound State of Pennsylvania, with her 125,-
000 children under the age of fifteen employed in the workshops, factories
and mines.
While you are looking to the literary attainments of these women ;
while you are mounting to your position at the top of the ladder, do
' not, I ask you, in the name of justice, in the name of humanity, do not
forget to give your attention and some of your assistance to the root of
all evil, the industrial and social system that is so oppressive, which has
wrought the chain of circumstances in which so many have become entan-
gled, and which has brought the once tenderly-cherished and protected
wife, the once fondly-loved mother to the position of the twelve or fourteen-
hour toiler of to-day. If you would protect the wives and mothers of the
future from this terrible condition we find these in to-day, give them your
assistance. The Knights of Labor may have made mistakes, but they are
the mistakes of those who started out with a dim knowledge of their object
before their eyes and do not see their way clear to reach it, but by education
and by help, the black list, the boycott, the strike, and the lock-out shall
soon be swept away into the dark ages where they belong, and no longer
be found under the stars and stripes of our American flag.
Mrs. Johns. The next speaker is Mrs. Esther L. Warner, who has been
for twenty years a practical farmer in Nebraska, has educated and supported
her children, and paid for her mile-square farm j hence she is eminently able
to speak about
WOMEN AS FARMERS.
Mrs. Warner —
" He that by the plow would thrive,
Himself must either hold or drive."
This old couplet intimates that muscle is the main element of success in
farming, but modern improvements have changed all that, and what is needed
now to succeed in agriculture is a guiding force to direct men and machinery.
Can women act as this guiding force ? They have demonstrated their ability
to acquire theoretical knowledge in all the departments of science and the
arts as taught in the schools.
Industries. 157
Agriculture is not higher than astronomy, nor deeper than geology, nor more
complicated than chemistry. To understand something of the nature of
different soils, to learn the proper depth to cut the turf in breaking prairie,
what rotation ,of crops will produce the best results, and how to plant pota-
toes, must be supposed to come within the range of woman's capacity. But
knowledge is not always power. To be able to " say to this one go and he
goeth, and to another come and he cometh, and to a servant do this and he
doeth it," is an important aid in carrying on successfully any business.
Farming requires a talent for managing men, and if we are to credit the
assertions of our gentlemen friends women as a class do not lack in that
direction; but your speaker confesses having been an ignominious failure in,
trying to manage men who needed managing. Her only resource was to
find, if possible, those who chose to do right, and then let them do as
they pleased. The numerous women who have deserted school-rooms for.
farms may be supposed to have learned, by trying their " 'prentice hands"
on boys, how to exercise a controlling influence over boys of larger growth,
and it would be interesting to know how many ex-teachers are a success as
farmers. Experiments are being made all over the West, from Dakota to
Texas.
To theorize and assert that a thing can be done is not so convincing as the
fact that it has been done. The large number of women all over the coun-
try, North and South, who have taken homesteads in Dakota, Kansas, and
Nebraska, and the cattle queens of Texas and Colorado, are facts, which
furnish their own commentary. And recently there comes the story of a
horse queen in Idaho who owns seven or eight hundred horses, and finds
them- more profitable than cattle-raising or wool-growing.
Another question comes to us: Is farming as an occupation womanly?
The wise man, in describing the model woman, says: "She considereth a
field and buyeth it; with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard ; "
and this attention to outside interests does not lead to neglect of the internal
arrangements of home or the adornment of her person. " She is not afraid
of the snow, for all her household are clothed in scarlet." " She maketh for
herself coverings of tapestry ; her clothing is silk and purple." There is no
hint that she is out of her sphere and should be remanded to the seclusion of
the kitchen and the nursery. She is not told that her earnings belong to
her husband, or that her individual life should be merged in his. The
eulogy of the inspired writer closes with these words: "Give her of the
fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates."
.What is womanliness? Is it weakness and incapacity, or is it the best in-
stincts of womanhood permeating her whole being, radiating from her per-
sonality, and finding expression in all gentle courtesies and womanly ways?
It is no fragile, evanescent thing to be blown away by prairie winds ; floods
can not drown it or droughts consume it. It survives hard work ; and a
158 International Council of Women.
woman of refinement might choose o take up " de shubble and de hoe"
laid down by "Poor Old Ned" rather than sit in "unwomanly rags,"
singing the " Song of the Shirt."
When a woman is thrown on her own resources for support she looks about
for something which she can do. Progressive changes in the present century
have thrown open to her the whole range of professional, commercial, and
industrial occupations, and the world is all before her where to choose ; but
she must consider her limitations — those of circumstances, of early educa-
tion, and, most important of all, the limitations of her own character.
Many have invested their little all in trade, and found too late they lacked
the commercial instinct, Many a woman is totally unfitted by nature
and inclination to endure the friction and competition of professional
and industrial life. If conscious of these limitations she looks for some-
thing different. Her Father is rich — "the earth is his and the fullness
thereof" — but she knows that by the laws of his paternal government his
children must "work out their own salvation " from physical want. She is
encouraged by the thought that nature is no respecter of persons — the rain
descends "alike upon the just and the unjust," and the " earth yields her
increase" to faithful tillage, irrespective of sex. She reasons that as every-
thing has its uses, if she is fit for nothing else she must be good at farming.
Such logic has sent some women West, myself among the number. The
great majority of women will always choose the sheltered places in the
world's work, though the future may show more exceptions to this rule than
the past. It has been said by a well-known modern writer that "in an ideal
state of society the outside work of the world will be largely performed by
men," and we are not inclined to dispute him ; but necessity knows no law.
When the civil war burst on this country two ladies from the North (sisters)
were teaching in Louisiana. The school was discontinued, but hostile armies
barred the way homeward, and Union sentiments made their stay unpleasant
and even dangerous. They fled to Texas, bought some sheep, a pony, and
a cabin. Alternating with each other in herding and housekeeping, they
ran their ranch alone until the profits enabled them to enlarge their business
and employ help. The close of the war found them in easy circumstances
and on the road to wealth.
When the white men of the South were swallowed up in its armies and the
slaves were released from all obligations to their owners, women educated in
luxury and helplessness rose to the occasion, hired and directed the labor,
and saved their plantations from ruin and themselves and people from starva-
tion.
To many a wife and mother who finds in the internal arrangements of her
home and the care of her children congenial and sufficient work there comes
a time when she must be father and mother to her children, and if the finan-
cial situation demands an addition to the means for their support and educa-
Industries. 159
tion, the question of ways and means must be considered. Under the stress
of such conditions, your speaker, in 1863, just after the passage of the home-
stead bill, went West and accepted a farm from Uncle Sam. When the
family took possession, in 1864, the working force consisted of the mother,
two sons, aged, respectively, fifteen and two-and-a-half years, and a daughter
of twelve. The head of the enterprise had the experience of having lived
on a farm the first twelve years of her life, and a determination to find out
how to do it. The eldest boy understood the care of cows and horses, and
had a mind to work. Some of the experiences of farming for over twenty
years, its failures and successes, might be of interest, but time forbids. Suffice
it to say, we succeeded in raising as many chickens to the acre as our neigh-
bors, and when the drought killed our trees we planted more. Grasshoppers
came and we were short on vegetables, but we never sent East for help and we
didn't eat grasshoppers. The experiment in farming still goes on ; there is
a. firm consisting of mother and son. The junior member acts as executive,
but the senior is not a silent partner. The time allotted is too short to treat
so large a subject exhaustively, and it has been said that statistics should be
seen and not heard. Persons interested who search for these will find ample
justification for placing among the industries " women as farmers."
Miss Anthony. After having seen the practical factory girl and heard
her speak on this platform, and a practical farmer, I want to tell you
that Mrs. Warner is not only a practical farmer, but a practical mother, too.
When we were out in the Nebraska campaign, six years ago, some of the
University students there thought they would bring objections against
woman's capacity to vote ; and in the balcony of that theater sprang up a
young man and made an argument proving woman's capacity not only to
vote, but to act independently for herself in every department ; and that
young man was a student of the State University of Nebraska, and the
son of this woman who has just spoken to you. I now show you another
practical woman, Mrs. Mary E. Gray Dow, the President of the Dover, N.
H., Street-Car Railroad Company.
Mrs. Dow. I need not say anything about the horse-railroad, as you have
all heard about it, but I would like to say something that I have done at
farming. I have, with my own hands, set every plant of the finest aspara-
gus beds in our city ; have raised small fruits, gooseberries, raspberries,
and strawberies, 111 abundance.
Mrs. Harriet R. Robinson, of Maiden, Mass. I went into a Lowell
factory when I was eleven years old, and worked fourteen hours a day. I
had a dear mother, who gave me enough to eat, and took good care that
I had sleep enough, and so it did not harm me. I went to the factory in
the morning at 5 o'clock, worked two hours, and then ran out for my break-
fast— a half-hour, perhaps — then went back for six hours more, and so
the thing went on until 7 o'clock at night. I stayed there for eleven years,
until I was married.
160 International Council of Women.
I remember the old life well. How good it was, and how many good
women came there to work ! because then women could not make a living,
anywhere but in the factory. And so I think some of the best women came
to Lowell; women who had not a single hope in the wo rid ; widows who
were then called "relicts," all sorts of women you speak of here — old maids
and poor women with no position, whose fathers had left them nothing but
the right to live on the farm as an incumbrance. But they finally heard of
the Lowell factory and came there. And, oh, how hopeless they were ! But
the first money they earned ! When they felt the jingle of the silver in their
pocket, then for the first time, their heads became erect and they walked as
if on air. And how they spent it ! They dressed themselves, and had books
for which they had longed, and the new life for them had begun. They
learned to express their thoughts, and the lady is here on the platform whose
husband was the best friend and helper those w^men ever knew. He did a
great work for the women of New England. I consider the Lowell factory
my alma mater. I am just as proud of it as many women are of the colleges
in which they have been educated.
We had a magazine called the Lowell Offering, and read our articles we
had written for it to Mr. Thomas, and he used to correct them for us if they
needed it. I have written about it in the report of the Bureau of Statistics
of Labor of Massachusetts. Among those girls are many known to fame.
There were many who wrote books ; some have written poems. Lucy Lar-
com, whom you all know, who really has a national fame, was one of these.
She went there day after day with the rest of us, and worked and earned her
living while she wrote her poems. Many of these authors went into other
fields of labor. I became a reformer, because it seemed to me to be of more
importance to help my race than it was to write verse, although I must con-
fess that I like to write verses.
I had many experiences in my child life in the Lowell mills; one of them
was to learn to be a striker. At 1 1 years of age I struck. I was a little
doffer. I was so young and small that I was allowed to run out part of the
hour when we were not busy taking off the full bobbins and replacing them
with others. This had to be done exactly on the hour. And in that way I
was taught to be prompt. The strike happened in this way : It was one of
the first ones in this country, I think, and occurred in 1836. When the
girls prepared to strike I joined with them. They had meetings, went to a
field, I think, and some one talked to them ; and finally a girl got up on a
stump and made a speech. I do not remember exactly what she said, but I
remember I thought it was the most dreadful thing in the world to hear a
woman talking in public. Well, when the time came that we were to leave
our work finally, the big girls would not start, and they hesitated and said,
" Had we better strike, and will it do any good ? " or, "I guess we might as
well go back to work." But I said, " I do not care who strikes, I going to
Industries. 161
strike," and so, leading the procession of all those large girls, so much older
than I, we marched out of the room.
The only bad result of all this was that my mother, who was a very poor
woman, with four children, was turned out of her house by the agent of the
corporation, who said : " The large girls among your boarders you could not
prevent from striking, but your daughter, being so small, you certainly could
control." My dear mother never coerced her children, but permitted us to
grow up in freedom of spirit and develop through our own hard experiences.
In 1836 a few of these factory girls formed themselves into a club, with a
constitution and list of officers. One of the articles stated that they formed
themselves into this organization for the purpose of improving the gifts which
God had given them. This was the first woman's club in New England, if
not in all the world, and was the advance guard of Sorosis and the hundreds
of other woman's clubs which have sprung up all over the country.
Mrs. Johns. I will now present Mrs. M. Louise Thomas, President of
Sorosis.
Mrs. Thomas. I am very glad to be permitted to tell this story of the
Lowell Offering, the first magazine ever written wholly by women. Mrs.
Robinson has already told you of its establishment. As the young people
say, that was rather before my time ; that is, it was before my marriage to
the good man who conceived the idea. My husband, the Rev. Abel C.
Thomas, was settled in Lowell, Mass., as the pastor of a church there; and
he saw so much talent in the girls employed in the factories, that he con-
ceived the idea of establishing improvement circles. They were held every
week in the vestry-room of his church, and of another church in the same city,
that of Rev. T. B. Thayer. Among other forms of entertainment, it was
suggested that the young women should prepare papers ; those that were not
ready to speak could read. Mr. Thomas very soon perceived great ability
in their productions. He had some skill as a practical printer in his
early life, and it entered his mind that he would publish thes,e papers in the
form of a magazine.
When Dickens came first to the United States he visited Lowell, and he
was greatly interested in the ability — in the quality, rather — of the minds
of the operatives in the mills, as exemplified in their writings. Those of you
who have read his travels in the New World will find that he makes special
mention of the Lowell Offering.
When Harriet Martineau came to make her first visit to this country she
was also deeply interested, and on her return to her own land she made
a reprint of the Lowell Offering, entitled Mind Among the Spindles.
The volume was upward of 200 pages. During her visit, I will say, there
were three young women who were particularly prominent as writers among
the factory operatives. They prepared a volume — a bound volume of the
Lowell Offering, and they inscribed upon the back of it, "To Harriet Mar-
162 International Council of Women.
tineau; from Harriet Farley, Harriet Lees, and Harriet Curtis," and they
were known by the name of the "Three Harriets."
In 1843, I think it was, Mr. Thomas withdrew from the editorial charge
and left Lowell, and these three Harriets succeeded him in the editorship of
the magazine. There is not, perhaps, very much in this movement, but it
shows to you that that prophecy given to us by Mrs. Barry of days to come
when labor shall stand on golden legs is not an idea without proper founda-
tion. In those days not only labor stood on golden legs, but the product of
labor, the brain power, was markedly affluent. These things, as I have told
you, have come to me by hearsay, but they are deeply implanted in my
mind, because I know the girls of that day who wrote while attending two
looms, keeping them going one on the right and one at the left, and at the
same time preparing the contents which went into the next morning's print.
I think Mrs. Robinson does not quite do justice to the high standard of
those women. They were women not only of strong, vigorous intellect, but
they had a good New England education, and many of them have married,
and are not only distinguished in the world of letters, but they have taken
as high positions in the land as many other women.
Miss Anthony. Now, I am going to tell you my factory experience :
My father was a manufacturer, and one day I heard him say to my mother
that one of the girls who attended the spooler was sick, and he didn't know
where he could get anybody to fill her place. My sister and myself both
sprang forward and said, "Father, let us go; we know how to tend the
spooler, and we can do it." Mother said : " No, you mustn't go ; it isn't
a safe pla°e." But father said it would be a good thing to let the girls go
and see if they could do it. " Well," said mother, "if it must be so, only
one shall go;" so, in order to decide the question as to who should
go, we drew cuts, with two slips of paper, and the one who drew the
longest was to go into the factory; and, to the day of my sister's death,
she insisted that she drew the long cut and worked in the factory two
weeks, and I insisted that I drew the long cut and worked two weeks.
I do not know which way it was, but the bargain was that the fortunate
drawer of the long slip should divide her wages with her unfortunate sister.
The wages were twelve shillings a week, and out of those twelve shillings, or
|li. 50, the ordinary girl paid her board— $1.00 a week— and had 50 cents
left to buy her clothing; but the fortunate one, whichever it was, worked
her two weeks, earned her $3.00, and shared them. My sister, true to her
artistic nature, bought a beautiful bead-bag. And what did I do with my
twelve shillings? [A voice in the audience: "Gave it away."] No, I
didn't. I bought six coffee cups and saucers for my mother — plain, blue,
large, old-fashioned coffee cups, and they were the nicest dishes at that time
that had ever been in my mother's house.
Another thing I remember. One day I heard father praising Sally Ann,
Industries. 163
a great tall woman from the Green Mountains of Vermont. She was a
weaver, and he said, " Sally Ann has wonderful skill ; she knows even more
than the overseer." The fact was that whenever there was any trouble either
with the machinery or the yarn on the beam the overseer could not remedy,
he would go to Sally Ann and say, " I will tend your eight looms if you
will look after Jane's." Sally Ann looked after Jane's looms and quickly
saw what was the matter. She straightened the tangled yarn or she found
the defect in the machinery; and I remember, though I was a mere child,
of saying to my father, " If Sally Ann knows more about the weaving and
machinery than Elijah, then why don't you make her the overseer?"
Miss Loud. Your Chairman has allowed me two minutes more. I want
to tell you that Mrs. Barry, whom you have received so favorably, was present
at a meeting a year ago where I spoke, and our audience at that time was
two-thirds men. I talked the suffrage for women, as I always do, as I think
it teaches and educates them, and Mrs. Barry followed me from the platform
and told me she was not a convert. So to-day, when I heard her talking about
equal rights and privileges, I wondered when she had changed her mind, and
when she came back I said : •' Mrs. Barry, what has come over the spirit of
your dream ? " She said : " What could I do ? Equal wages are not every-
thing. I had to come to this, but you must remember that all my education
and all my prejudices for twenty years were against it, but when I began to
think over what the Knights of Labor have done to give others education, I
had to come to it."
Mrs. Johns. A communication from the Federation of Labor Unions
has b2en sent to us.
To the President and Members of the International Council of Women :
At a regular session of the Federation of Labor Unions of the District of Columbia,
held on Tuesday evening, the 27th instant, the undersigned committee was appointed
to prepare an address to your Council with regard to the attitude of labor organiza-
tions respecting acts of intimidation and violence. It is proper to state here that
this action was called forth by some remarks made by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
which we shall hereinafter quote.
The Federation of Labor Unions of the District of Columbia sends greetings and
wishes you God-speed in the work of securing' exact equality for women in every
department of labor. The progress made for the advancement of your cause dur-
ing the past forty years tells, in unmistakable language, the efficacy of well-directed
organization. The thinking women and men of the world are with you. The abo-
lition of chattel slavery in the United States was only one step toward freedom.
The second and third yet remain to be taken. When the masses shall have been
emancipated from industrial bondage, and the political and civil disabilities of
woman shall have been removed, then will we be prepared to erect a temple to Free-
dom as a fit dwelling for the Goddess of Liberty.
As this session of your Council is appropriated to the discussion of industries by
representatives of labor organizations, we avail ourselves of the opportunity thus
afforded to respectfully refer to the following remarks attributed to Mrs. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton in her address of welcome, in the hope of placing labor organizations
164 International Council of Women.
in their true light before your Council, and of giving Mrs. Stanton an opportunity
of explaining her notions of the object and aims of these organizations. "If the
wrongs of our sex are not righted," said Mrs. Stanton, speaking extemporaneously
for the moment, "women will join hands with the labor unions, with the Socialists,
and with the Anarchists, and the scenes of the French Revolution will be repeated
in this fair land of ours."*
We are of the opinion that these words were uttered on the spur of the moment,
and without previous investigation on the part of the speaker as to the means
employed by organized labor in elevating the masses. We discountenance, and by
no means tolerate, acts of violence to person or property on the part of our members,
and we have neither affiliation with nor sympathy for associations that do. Our
methods are those of peaceable, law-abiding citizens, who believe in the supremacy
of the law of the land, and who are desirous of righting wrongs by peaceful methods.
The general tendency of labor organizations is to make each member connected
with the same a better citizen by educating him into a broader economy and a higher
notion of moral excellence and civilization.
E. W. Oyster,
Jesse Laws,
Elizabeth L. Eaton,
P. L. O'Brien,
W. C. Haislup,
Committee.
Mrs. Johns. The meeting is now adjourned.
♦Mrs. Stanton's remarks at this point were prophetic. She said: "The next generation of
women will not argue half a century patiently, as we have done ; but, exasperated with a
sense of injustice, will join hands with labor unions, with Nihilists, Socialists, Anarchists,
Communists, and the scenes of the French Revolution may be repeated in this fair land of
ours." If the cries of labor are still ignored, another generation of men may be driven to
violence also. Let ua remember that the Nihilists, the Socialists, the Anarchists, the Com-
munists are each fighting under the despotisms of the Old World for the liberties they can not
secure through laws which they have no power to change. E. C. S.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 1888.
EVENING SESSION.
PROFESSIONS.
The meeting was called to order by Miss Anthony, who in-
troduced the first speaker of the evening, Prof. Ren a A.
Michaels, of Evanston, Dean of the Northwestern University.
WOMEN AS EDUCATORS.
Miss Michaels. Woman's work as an educator has been divided into
two eras, and the separating line is almost coincident with the emancipation
proclamation. In the first era, including all of those eighteen and more
centuries of the world's progress, woman's work as an educator was mainly-
confined to the home circle, and, at best, to her individual, social, and in-
tellectual sphere. It is true that Pindar acknowledged that many of his
poetic beauties were gems from the crown of Corinne. It is true, indeed,
that Socrates acknowledged that much of his philosophy was drawn from his
fair teacher Diatema ; and it is also true that Hypatia expounded the mys-
teries of the Neo-Platonic philosophy to the young Greeks ; and that many
learned women have held positions and chairs in the universities of Southern
Europe. The blue-stockings of Dr. Johnson's time were the natural pro-
genitors of the strong-minded women of to-day.
It is only a little more than half a century ago that a bill was introduced
into the legislature of the State of New York praying for an appropriation
for the erection of certain seminaries and high schools, and it was urged by
the advocates of the measure that those schools might furnish young ladies
as teachers in the public schools of that State. But the learned statesmen
of that time scouted the idea, as they expressed it, of committing the train-
ing of the sons of the State to women, and one very learned statesman im-
mortalized himself by saying that " learning was a very dangerous thing for
women; it would draw them from their domestic duties, and, therefore, it
would be very pernicious for the interests of the State and society." If we
look over the curriculum of the " ladies' courses," of which the very kind
but conservative gentlemen were directors in that day, we shall be amazed
at the work accomplished by the women as educators in every field, who had
this delicately laid out "ladies' courses" for their discipline and inspiration.
The curriculum and, therefore, the education of women has passed through
two phases, or, I ought to say, that it is now well advanced in the second
phase. Tne first phase would have been characterized by Mr. Mill as the
education of the sentiments. It was believed by those kind, but very con-
166 International Council of Women.
servative directors, that too much mathematics would be fatal to the health
of young women, too much science would unsettle her religious faith, and
that any Greek at all would make her masculine, although the Greeks num-
bered among their greatest poets a woman ; and it was believed that the
study of logic would be fatal to her mind and body. You all know the
results. You will remember that in the first period that I have noted here
the sphere of woman as an educator was confined to the secondary grades
of instruction. It could not be otherwise, for the work that was laid out in
those "ladies' courses" that I have mentioned could not by any means fit
women for taking places in the higher positions of learning. At that time
we see that the very highest position the woman could obtain was that of
preceptress. The preceptress meant a little teaching of everything and great
deal of scolding of everybody. In fact, the preceptress was the natural
headsman or executioner of the institution. It was she who had to do all the
scolding of the boys and the girls — for the social code was held, and is still
held in some places, that girls must not only be whipped for their own sins,
but for the boys' as well. And the portraits of the old-time preceptress,
like that of the Yorkshire schoolmaster, will never be effaced from our educa-
tional history. Prim, plain to a fault, geometrically plain in face, manner,
and dress, she was supposed to be the inveterate foe of everything masculine;
and it was very ingenuously believed that she would have gladly banished the
masculine gender from good old Mr. Brown's grammar. Michigan Uni-
versity opened its doors to women. Then began a new era in the history of
woman as an educator. It was then that the golden key was given to her
that was to unlock the door to every department of collegiate instruction ;
to every profession which leads even to the ballot-box itself. How little they
dreamed — those very kind but conservative gentlemen — that they were allow-
ing a Trojan horse to be brought within their walls.
Taking a bird's-eyeview of what women have done, let us look for a mo-
ment at some examples. I think I have been correctly informed that in the
Johns Hopkins University very recently ex-President White, of Cornell,
mentioned before a class of specialists as the best work in a certain line that
they were considering was the work of a lady. I refer to the " Parliaments
of Paris," by Prof. Jane M. Bancroft, formerly Dean of the Woman's Col-
lege of the Northwestern University. And you all know that Prof. Maria
Mitchell has been treading the pathways of the stars and discovering new
worlds. Then here is my friend, the distinguished professor, Louisa Kead
Stowell, of the University of Michigan, who is known in two continents as
a specialist in microscopy, and is the first woman educated in America to be
elected as a member of the Royal Microscopical Society of London. Pro-
fessor Stowell has also been elected and honored as a member of one of the
most conservative organizations in this country — the Michigan State Phar-
maceutical Association. The American Educational Association, the Associa-
Professions. 167
tion for the Advancement of Science, and the Modern Language Association
of America admit women to membership on precisely the same terms as men.
How astounded would those New York statesmen have been, for they would
not have believed that good prophet, Mrs. Willard, if she had told them that
all of these things would take place, and, moreover, that an army of women
would be training the sons of this vast Republic in all its schools just fifty years
hence; and, further, that women would be admitted to the governing boards
of instruction as well, and, that we have School Suffrage for women in
twelve States of the Union and this, my friends, all in just fifty years.
If I were to be asked this evening to state in what field I think woman's
influence as an educator would be especially felt in the next fifty years, I
should unhesitatingly reply, the class-room and the press — the class-room,
the great under-graduate college for our young men and women to-day, and
the press, the great post-graduate college for our young men and women of
the future. There is one step further for woman in preparation as an edu-
cator ; that can not be reached until the best university in this land, the only
institution that is founded on the highest a"hd broadest university idea, the
Johns Hopkins University, with its magnificent corps of specialists, shall be
opened to young women.
Miss Anthony. I was in hopes the Dean would have heard of a remark
that was made at the meeting of the State Superintendents of the Nation,
held the other day in the Franklin school-house in this city, by President
Elliott, of Harvard University. In his recommendations for the elevation
of the pr.blic schools of this country, he claimed that the great deterioration
in our schools was attributable to the fact that there were too many women
teaching. Worse still, not a single superintendent in that assemblage of
educators rebuked this insult to the army of noble women devoted to this
profession. I wish the Dean had heard that, and answered the President.
I have now the pleasure of presenting to you Laura C. Holloway, of
Brooklyn, N. Y., wh'o was for many years on the editorial staff of the Daily
Eagle of that city.
Mrs. Holloway. There never was a time since newspapers were made that
women were not at work upon them. In fact, the printing-press was discov-
ered by a woman. Don't you doubt it, because it is the truth. A Japanese
empress, with an unpronounceable name, who lived in the eighth century,
really invented the printing-press, and because there wasn't a man in all the
kingdom wise enough to know what to do with it, it was suppressed.
There was a woman as long ago as the days of Benjamin Franklin, the
wife of his brother James, who, forty-three years before the Revolution, in
1732, published the first paper ever issued in Rhode Island. She was early
left a widow, and continued her husband's business, to whom she had been
of material assistance while he lived. She was appointed printer to the
colony and supplied blanks to all the public offices, printed pamphlets, etc.,
168 International Council of Women.
at the same time bestowing her special care upon this pioneer paper. The
oldest paper in the Revolution, as you know, was edited by the daughter-in-
law of a man who was disabled. Her name was Mrs. Mary K. Goddard.
Another paper edited during a portion of the Revolutionary war was the Bos-
ton News-Letter, by Mrs. Margaret Draper, and when the city was besieged
by the British, hers was the only paper which continued its issue.
In New York, Mrs. Mary Holt edited and published the New York Journal;
she was appointed State printer and in her newspaper did good service in
aiding and encouraging the patriots in 1776. And I think the women did
good service in the last war, and might in some others ; so they might be
allowed to vote for that reason, if no other. In Philadelphia, Mrs. Cor-
nelia Bradford made a handsome competency in the printing and publishing
business in the colonial times, about 1742. Another Philadelphia printer of
great ability and reputation was Mrs. Zeuger, who succeeded to her husband's
business, including the management of a newspaper previous to 1748.
Mrs. Annie K. Green was the colony printer in 1767, and also published
the Maryland Gazette. Mrs. Elizabeth Timothee published the Charleston
Gazette, in South Carolina, in 1773, and her daughter-in-law carried on the
paper after the war. Clementine Bird published the Virginia Gazette during
the late colonial days until the outbreak of the war in 1775.
Mary Crouch assisted her husband on a paper published in Charleston,
S. C, in opposition to the Stamp Act, and continued the issue after his
decease. In 1780 she removed to Salem, Mass., taking with her her press
and type, where she continued the printing business with much success.
Penelope Russell edited a paper called the Censor, at Berlin, Conn., in
1 77 1. She was to a great extent her own compositor, setting up her edito-
rials straight from the case, without the use of pen and ink. The Hartford
Courant was for two years, 1 777-' 79, edited by Mrs. Watson. This was one
of the best papers published in New England until modern times.
These are but a few specimens of the early women printers, many of whom
have missed historical record ; but of the seventy-eight newspapers published
in the colonies sixteen were edited by women, and of these sixteen, fourteen
were ardent patriots and eloquent champions of liberty and equal rights.
Twenty-five years ago the modern movement in journalism commenced.
Very few women, and those under exceptional circumstances, were to be
found in offices thirty years ago ; the most prominent journalist at that
time was Margaret Fuller, who was so long associated with Horace Greeley in
the New York Tribune, and, strange as it may seem, one of the first newspaper
offices in the United States to employ women in any capacity was that of the
Guardian, published at Paterson, N. J., whose editor not only engaged women
compositors, but had for several years a forewoman, who also took entire charge
of the paper, making all the selections, judging of all matter inserted whenever
the^regular editor was absent. One young lady who was graduated from the
Professions. 169
office of the Paterson Guardian is now engaged in the responsible position
of a make-up in New York.*
It is a fallacious and popular idea that women have usurped any of the oc-
cupations of men. The real truth is that, through the changes of civiliza-
tion, men have crowded women out of their places. Everybody knows that
women have been bakers, brewers and butter-makers, weavers and spin-
ners since all time, and that it is because they have been pushed out of all
their old accustomed places that they are now prominent as teachers, reform-
ers, and newspaper writers, trying, by example and precept, to help society
adjust the new order of things with equity and right feeling.
Miss Anthony. The next speaker was the first woman admitted to the
National Medical Association of America, 1876, at Philadelphia — Dr. Sarah
Hackett Stevenson, of Chicago.
WOMAN IN MEDICINE.
Dr. Stevenson. One well-authenticated fact in history establishes a
precedent. " Do you wish to be great ? Then be great with a true greatness,
which is knowing the facts of nature and being able to use them. Do you
wish to be strong ? Then be strong with a true strength, which is knowing
the facts of nature and being able to use them. Do you wish to be wise ?
Then be wise with a true wisdom, which is knowing the facts of nature and
being able to use them. Do you wish to be free ? Then be free with a true
freedom, which is, again, knowing the facts of nature and being able to use
them." Such are the words of Charles Kingsley, and such is my message
to all women — viz., the great value of the habit of mind which the study of
natural science can develop. Like Charles Kingsley, I have watched reform-
ers in their endeavors to put society into some sort of a freedom mill in
order to grind out a regeneration. Like him, I have observed that the kind
of flour that comes out depends for the most part upon the kind of grain
put in, rather than upon the make of the machine.
The great problem, then, is to get grain, and again the words of this
gifted author serve my purpose, except that where he uses the word men I
use the word women. " What do I mean by good grain? Good women,
honest women, accurate women, thoughtful women, patient women, self-
restraining women, fair women, modest women, women who are aware of
their own vast ignorance compared with the vast amount there is to be
learned in such a universe as this, women who are accustomed to look at
both sides of a question, and instead of making up their minds in haste like
bigots and lunatics, wait like wise women for more facts and more thought
about the facts — in one word, women who have acquired just the habit of
mind which the study of natural science can develop and must have, for
without it there is no use studying natural science." And the woman who
has not that habit of mind, if she meddle with science, will merely become a
♦See "History of Woman Suffrage," Vol. I. chap, ii., "Woman in Newspapers."
12
170 International Council of Women.
quack and a charlatan, only fit to get her bread as a spirit-rapper or inventor
of infallible pills. This is the great danger that moreNfchan any other threat-
ens the advancement of women in medicine. No outside forces can prevent
their attaining the highest eminence, although outside opposition is by no
means overcome, as we shall see, but the forces which are to be dreaded most
are those which women themselves may generate.
The majority of men, notwithstanding all their advantage of conditions,
are lacking in this scientific habit of mind. What, then, can be expected of
woman, to whom science has been an abhorrence to be shunned or an enigma
not to be answered ? It is to this slovenly, unscientific, habit of thought
which is hers by tradition and education, that woman owes her easy conquest
by quackery. Besides this inherited habit of mind, woman's economic
dependence favors her espousal of the superficial. The easy systems of med-
icine commend themselves to her, because of the more speedy financial
returns. Woman's personal poverty stands equally in the way of the
patient accumulation of facts. The public's love for infallible pills on the
one hand and her need of money on the other kills the scientific spirit,
and never since the day that Bacon taught us the meaning of science have
there been committed so many sins in the name of science. With the word
science for a prefix or a suffix, any moral or intellectual monstrosity is floated
out on the popular tide as a system of medicine. I am glad to be able to
say that these pseudo-scientists are not all women, but I should fail in my
duty toward women, did I not use this opportunity to plead with them
against lending themselves to this degeneration of science. There is but
one way to know anything; that way is by close, patient, all-absorbing study
with your ear close to the heart of nature and your finger upon her pulse.
Medical science, which, in its widest sense, includes all natural science,
can not be learned by calling public meetings and talking it over. Science
lies not that way. So I would urge upon women who are contemplating the
study of medicine to choose that school in which the very longest, instead
of the shortest, course of study is prescribed, for the very longest is all too
short compared with all there is to be leanted. Let such women put away from
them the temptation of money-getting and great popularity. The women
who have not the strength of purpose to do this had far better turn their en-
ergies into commercial channels; the altar of science can never be con-
verted into a bargain counter.
Beside this economic state of dependence we also find that the medical
schools for women are poor. There is scarcely $100,000 worth of property
belonging to any one of them, while the famous medical colleges of the
world count their wealth by the million. As I have stood within the portals
of those immense structures of the Old World I have wondered if the time
would ever come when women could command such wealth for the study of
science, or, better still, could be admitted to full privileges in such institutions.
Professions. 171
Some of those doors are turning. France and Switzerland grant full degrees
and England permits' examinations. It is my judgment that women should
unite in their efforts to open the institutions already existing rather than to
call into being any more sickly, starving colleges such as we see attempting
to teach medicine all over the country.
It kills the spirit of science when the medical school becomes a commer-
cial enterprise, and the poverty of those schools compels them to make
money, so the main requirement of the student is ability to pay the fee,
and the professor is no authority in anything but the fee. The greatest
hindrance in the way of medical science to-day in America is the ex-
istence of these commercial medical colleges. The same spirit is creep-
ing into the schools for women. At first there were so few women who
cared to study medicine there was no temptation for the medical tradesman,
but just now he is getting warmly interested in the medical education of
woman — it is a new method of advertising — therefore very precious. The
way for women to save themselves from this cupidity is to make their schools
so wealthy they can live without student's fees, or else to find entrance to
the already existing institutions. I know of no better way in which women
of large fortunes can serve their sex than by making the impoverished medi-
cal colleges for women independent of patronage and at the same time com-
pel patronage by being able to pay for the very best scientific teaching in
the profession. We thus see how closely allied are our two greatest foes,
poverty and quackery; but the physician, man or woman, who has once
attained what Charles Kingsley calls the scientific habit of mind, could not be
a quack if he would, and would not if he could.
It would be a comparatively easy task for me to tell you how many women
physicians there are and how much money they are making. Suffice it to
say there are about one thousand registered physicians. Some are saving
$100 a month, and others are making the two ends meet on $50,000 a year.
But a true friend is one who warns of danger ; so I have called attention to
what I consider our greatest danger — sham science, the craze or fad of the day.
And now one word concerning what medical women are doing, and I am
done. In the first place, let me call your attention to the fact that a few
young girls, inexperienced, poor, trammeled by the narrow policy of the
societies that have sent them, have done more, as doctors, to westernize the
East, occidizing the Orient, or, if you would rather say it, Christianizing
the heathen, than have all the mints of missionary money that have been
sent hitherto. Why ? Because they administered to the people upon the
plane of their necessities. They have gone to work in the order of nature.
There is scarcely a land under heaven where woman'as physician is not found,
and for a hundred years to come the supply will not equal the demand.
Next to this great question of the missionary doctor, I'd like to call the
attention of this Council to the institutions in which women are detained,
172 International Council of Women.
•either for crime, insanity, or disease. While I do not approve of institu-
tions, and wish the day might come when human beings shall not be herded
under the same roof for any cause, while I believe that institutional life tends
to beat out of the individual the last spark of real dignity, that it simply
means that the weak and vicious are at the mercy of the strong and vicious,
who are protected by the name of charity or law — yet, as institutions do
exist, the public ought to insist upon it that wherever the sick, mentally or
bodily, are detained, whether the institution be public or private, physicians,
not politicians or professional philanthropists, should have full charge.
The inhumanities of institutional life, even in this age of the world, are
heart-sickening. Business men run institutions at so much a head — the
smaller per capita the greater the success of the institutions — while the fact
that the people inside are sick is the last fact considered. After the public
has demanded that physicians, not commercial men, shall treat the sick, let
us demand that wherever sick women are detained by law or charity these
women, as physicians, shall also be retained by both law and charity. Here
is practical work for women who are longing for a career. Go back to your
homes and visit your town, county, and State institutions; especially make
a call at your county poor-house, and look at the pitiful sights in the cells of
the maniacs there detained, and, after you have asked God to forgive you for
the neglect, lose no time in finding and appointing a woman physician to care
for your unfortunate sisters, but do not stop here. After she is appointed see
to it that she is paid just what a man would be paid. In this regard the West is
in advance of the East. I know oneof the finest women in the world, andagood
doctor, too, for I helped to educate her, who is doing a man's work at Worcester,
and yet her salary is the lowest in the institution, and she is kept from all pro-
motion. Dr. Alice Bennett has full charge of the female department of the East-
ern State Hospital for the Insane, at Norristown, Pa. Many of our asylums are
placing the women's wards entirely under the care of women. Eighteen in-
stitutions are now employing women. The time is not far distant when public
sentiment will demand that all insane women shall be cared for by women.
Then there is the hospital question. This has been the Gibraltar of our
opposition. But continual dropping does wear away the stone. The largest
general hospital in the West has already had two women as Internes. The third
and fourth are awaiting vacancies. Just as I left Chicago a petition from the
doctors had been sent into the governing board protesting against the admis-
sion of these last two women, who have gained the appointments by rigid com-
petition. One of the doctors was heard to say, " Why, next October there
will be three women in the hospital, and there are only nine physicians
altogether ! " I thought one-third a very fair proportion, particularly as two-
thirds of the patients are women. Men consider they get their best training
in large hospitals. They sacrifice time, money, and no end of influence to
obtain these positions. The experience is equally good for women, and, as
Professions. 173
women are taxed to support these various hospitals, both public and private, we
are only the daughters of our fathers when we ask for personal representation.
Surgery, too, has warned us not to take the sacred knife or ligature in our
nerveless grasp ; but it must have taken a great deal of nerve for Jael to
drive that nail through Sisera's head and not into her own fingers; that
same nerve, educated, might tie an artery or perform an abdominal section.
I could fill a book with just the names of opportunities in medicine for women.
Why, there are 60,000 post-office towns in the United States, every one of
which could support a woman physician. Wherever the United States mail
goes the female is sure to follow. Then there are the great fields of ethics,
pharmacy, and dentistry, which are comparatively untouched.
But the first good of woman in medicine comes to woman herself. She
has been made to believe that she was a special order of creation and not
subjected to the same laws ; that shi was going to conquer by intuition or
inspiration, or some other extraordinary method; and when she finds that
she can conquer nature only by obeying her, then, for the first time, she
learns her lesson. Professor Huxley once told his class that he knew of no
special order of creation unless it were that grouse were created with special
reference to the adjournment of Parliament on the 12th of August. If, for
no other purpose, the study of medicine has been invaluable to woman in
showing her where she belongs ; that she is neither an angel nor a demon,
but a fairly well-made half of mankind — no better and no worse than the
other half. Woman will never be emancipated from any bondage until she
learns her own nature; not from books, not from men, but from her own
mother — nature. I implore you, then, not to take things second-hand. Go
back to your mother. She is so kind when you are in earnest. She never
gives stones for bread save when you are pretending to be hungry.
A violin solo was then rendered by Miss Maud Powell, a lovely
girl of seventeen, tastefully dressed in a delicate shade of pink
silk. She played with wonderful skill and expression selec-
tions from Faust, remarkable alike for their difficulty and
beauty, and completely entranced her audience. Standing
there unconscious of her power and her charms, she seemed
the personification of music and grace, and when she vanished
it was like waking from a heavenly dream.
Miss Anthony. You will now listen to Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender, of
Nebraska.
WOMAN IN LAW.
Mrs. Bittenbender. The first woman attorney-at-law in America was
Margaret Brent, of Maryland. On order of court, made January 3, 1648,
she was admitted to the bar as the attorney of Lord Baltimore, the Lord
Proprietary of the Province. History records that she exercised her attor-
174 International Council of Women.
neyship with great energy and ability. Before her admission, however, she
had not been a regular student of law. The first American woman to be
admitted to the legal profession on proper prosecution of law studies was
Arabella A. Mansfield, of Mount Pleasant, Iowa. This was in June, 1869.
Since her admission nearly one hundred other American women have been
admitted, two of whom are colored. A large number are law school grad-
uates. The first American law school to open its doors to women was that
of Washington University at St. Louis. This school granted the application
of Phcebe W. Couzins for admission in December, 1868. Now, nearly all
law schools of the United States freely admit women. Among those still
refusing are the law departments of Yale, Harvard, Columbian, and George-
town Universities, and Columbia College.
As to the relative standing of the sexes as students in law schools, Hon.
Henry Wade Rogers, Dean of the University of Michigan Department of
Law, in a letter dated March nth, says : "The women who have attended
the law school have compared favorably in the matter of scholarship with the
men. Some of the women who have been in attendance have been very
bright students, indeed, while a few have been quite poor. The question is
not, if you will allow me to say.so, whether women can acquire a knowledge
of law. They are just as capable of acquiring that knowledge as men are.
Their failure at the bar, if they do fail, will not be due to any want of
ability to grasp legal principles, but it will be due to their unfitness in other
respects for the contentions of the forum." Hon. Henry Booth, Dean of
the Union College of Law, Chicago, reports the standing of women in
scholarship as that of a fair average, and says : " We discover no difference
in the capacity of the sexes to apprehend and apply legal principles. We
welcome ladies to the school and regard their presence an advantage in pro-
moting decorum and good order."
Women of this country, on application, are now generally admitted to the
legal profession without objection, the statutes being liberally construed for
the purpose of their admission where there has been no special enactment.
When admitted they are en titled to practice before all courts, State and national,
the same as men are. Of their admission in the early days of the innovation,
Ellen A. Martin, of the bar of Illinois, in an article on "Admission of Women
to the Bar," published in the Chicago Law Times, 1886, says: "Women were
admitted on their first application, without anything in the law specially requir-
ing it, in Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, North Carolina, Utah, District of Colum-
bia, Maine, Ohio, Wisconsin, Kansas, Connecticut, Nebraska, Washing-
ton Territory, and to the United States circuit and district courts in Illi-
nois, Iowa, and Texas. In Wisconsin and Ohio, where, after some women
had been admitted, others were refused by other judges, the legislatures at
once passed laws forbidding their exclusion. In Illinois, California, Minne-
sota, Massachusetts, Oregon, New York, the United States Supreme Court
Professions. 175
and Court of Claims, the courts would not admit women until laws were
passed providing for it, and in all cases, the legislatures promptly passed
them. In Congress the law was delayed for a time, the Judiciary Com-
mittee of the Senate holding that no special legislation was necessary, that
the United States courts already had sufficient authority to admit women.
In Pennsylvania the admission of women was finally secured under the origi-
nal law passed in 1834 for the admission of ' persons.' The first time the
matter could be acted upon by the supreme court of Pennsylvania it acted
favorably."
Women, anxious for admission, were the first to advocate these enabling
acts. It is especially interesting to read of the able efforts made by Myra
Bradwell for admission in Illinois, Belva A. Lockwood in securing an act of
Congress to enable women to be admitted to the United States Supreme
Court, and of the twelve years' struggle of Carrie Burnham Kilgore for
admission to the courts of Pennsylvania. Under this innovation twenty-one
law firms have been established, husband and wife constituting the firm.
Frequent applications are made by young women to become students in the
offices of women who are in the practice. Many are working their way into
the profession — some as stenographers and type- writers in law offices, others
as court reporters.
Clara S. Foltz and Laura de Force Gordon, of California, won legal repute
before admission to the bar by the able handling of their mandamus case to
compel the opening of the Hastings College of Law to women. Clara S.
Foltz and Helen M. Cougar delivered able legal addresses before the stu-
dents of the Union College of Law, in 1886. Catherine G. Waugh, a
graduate of the Union College of Law, is professor of commercial law in the
Rockford (111.) Commercial College. Several have received court appoint-
ments as examiners in chancery and examiners of applicants for admission
to the bar, and have acted acceptably in these capacities. Emma Haddock,
of Iowa City, in June, 1878, was appointed by the supreme court of Iowa
to examine students of the State University for graduation and admission to
the bar. She was reappointed for two years following. Women have been
elected as justices of the peace, and are capably acting in that capacity in
Kansas and Wyonvng Territory.
In 1884 Phoebe W. Couzins was appointed Deputy Marshal for the Eastern
District of Missouri. In 1887, at tne death of her father (the Marshal), she
was appointed by Associate Justice Miller, ad interim, to fill his place, and re-
ceived many encomiums for the excellent manner in which she discharged
the various duties.
Several able articles have been written for law journals by women of this
country. Of books, M. B. R. Shay, of Streator, 111., is author of "Stu-
dents' Guide to Common Law Pleading" (published in 1881). Of this
work, Hon. R. M. Benjamin, Dean of Law Faculty, and Hon. A. G. Karr,
Professor of Pleading, of Law Department of the Illinois Wesleyan Univer-
176 International Council of Women.
sity, say, as published in Callaghan & Company's annual catalogue of law
books: " We have examined with considerable care ' Shay's Questions on
Common Law Pleading,' and can cheerfully recommend them to students
as admirably adapted to guide them to a thorough knowledge of the prin-
ciples of pleading as laid down by those masters of the system, Stephen,
Gould, and Chitty." Mrs. Shay graduated from the Bloomington Law
School in 1879. She won the prize of $100 for the best examination in her
class and was the valedictorian.
Lelia J. Robinson, of Suffolk (Mass.) bar, is author of " Law Made Easy —
a Book for the People" (published in 1886). Of this work, Hon. Charles
T. Russell, professor in Boston University Law School, says : " For the end
proposed, the information and instruction of the popular mind in the ele-
ments of law, civil and criminal, I know of no work which surpasses it. It
is comprehensive and judicious in scope, accurate in statement, terse, vigor-
ous, simple, and clear in style. My gratification in this work is none the
less that its author is the first lady Bachelor of Laws graduated from our Bos-
ton University Law School, and that she has thus early and fully vindicated
her right to the highest honors of the school accorded her at her gradua-
tion." Chief Justice Stone, of Alabama, who has been on the bench there
for forty years, recently gave a most enthusiastic opinion of this book.
Many commendations have been received from brother lawyers by the
authors of these works.
Myra Bradwell is editor of the Chicago Legal News, one of the most noted
law journals of this country, which she founded in 1868. She is the presi-
dent of one of the largest law-book publishing companies in the United States.
Catharine V. Waite, of the Illinois bar, edits the Chicago Law Times,
which she established in 1886, and publishes quarterly " for the discussion,
from a legal standpoint, of the great questions which interest the commu-
nity." This journal is receiving widespread recognition for its legal worth.
Bessie Bradwell Helmer, also of the Illinois bar, edited the last twelve vol-
umes of " Bradwell's Appellate Court Reports." She was the valedictorian
of her law class, that of Union College of Law of 1882.
The first association of women in law is called "The Equity Club."
This was organized in October, 1886, by students and graduates of the law
department of Michigan University, having for its object " the interchange
of encouragement and friendly counsel between law students and practi-
tioners." It is international in scope. Each member is required to con-
tribute a yearly letter "giving an account of individual experiences,
thoughts on topics of general interest, and helpful suggestions " for publica-
tion and distribution among members of the association. Last year sixteen
letters were contributed. The Equity Club has a membership of thirty-two ;
Letitia L. Burlingame, president ; Martha K. Pearce, corresponding sec-
retary.
Professions. Ill
Another association of women, recently organized, is the " Woman's Inter-
national Bar Association," having for its object : first, to open law schools
to women ; second, to remove all disabilities to admission of women to the
bar, and to secure their eligibility to the bench ; third, to disseminate knowl-
edge concerning woman's legal status; fourth, to secure better legal condi-
tions for women. President, Catharine V. Waite, Chicago, 111. ; General
Secretary, AdaM. Bittenbender, Lincoln, Neb. ; General Treasurer, J. Ellen
Foster, Clinton, Iowa; Secretaries — Great Britain, Eliza Orme, London;
Italy, Lidia Poet, Turin ; Russia, Evreninova, St. Petersburg ; Swit-
zerland, E. Kempin, Zurich ; Hawaii, AlmedaE. Hitchcock, Hilo ; United
States, Lelia J. Robinson, Boston.
Women are welcomed as members of bar associations established by our
brothers in the profession. But few have availed themselves of this privi-
lege. For various reasons quite a number of women admitted have not, so
far, identified themselves with law practice. Others have allowed themselves
to be drawn into temperance and other reform movements; but the greater
portion at once settled down to follow their chosen pursuit with no devia-
tion, and are ripening into able, experienced lawyers, and winning their fair
share of clientage. Some confine themselves mainly to an office practice,
seldom or never appearing in public; others prefer court practice. Those
who enter the forum are cordially countenanced by brother lawyers, and ac-
ceptably received before court and jury. As a rule they are treated with
the utmost courtesy by the bench, the bar, and other court officers.
Woman's influence in the court-room as counsel is promotive of good in
more than one respect. Invectives against opposing counsel, so freely made
use of in some courts, are seldom indulged in when woman stands as the
opponent. And in social impurity cases, language, in her presence, becomes
more chaste, and the moral tone thereby elevated perceptibly. The rule,
11 No smoking in the court-room," is better observed.
But there should be one more innovation brought into general vogue —
that of the mixed jury system. When we shall have women both as lawyers
and jurors to assist in the trial of cases, then and not till then will woman's
influence for good in the administration of justice be fully felt. In Wyoming
and Washington Territories the mixed jury system has been tried and found
perfectly practicable and highly satisfactory to all except evil-doers.
English women began the study of law with a view of practicing before
American women. The British Medical Journal is quoted as saying, in
1867, that " more English women seek for admission to the bar than for en-
trance into medical practice." But while those who have sought have been
permitted to qualify for and practice as attorneys-at-law and solicitors in
chancery, they have not been permitted to become barristers-at-law and ex-
ercise the rights of that rank in the prosecution of their cases. The reason
for this lies in the fact that women are denied admission to the four Inns of
178 International Council of Women.
Court, which are the only places where barristers are trained and ranked.
These Inns of Court are voluntary societies, from whose power to reject ap-
plications for membership there is no appeal.
Of legal works by our English sisters, only two have come to my notice,
" Trjal by Jury, the Birthright of the People of England," by Arabella
Shedden (published in 1865), and " A Brief Summary, in Plain Language,
of the Most Important Laws of England Concerning Women," by Barbara
L. S. Bodichon (published in 1869). These are reputed able works.
"Woman and the Practice of the Law," by Lidia Poet, our Italian sister,
" discusses the question of woman's right to practice law as it has been pre-
sented recently in Italy." Under " the educational law" of 1876, which
" opened the doors ofthe University of Italy to women, and thereby enabled
them to obtain academic degrees in law," Signora Poet "completed the
university curriculum in law, and having assiduously attended courts, and
otherwise complied with legal requirements, was admitted to the Society of
the Bar of Turin." But her sex precludes her from practicing. In speak-
ing of her case, the American Law Review says : "In view, however, of
the strong support which the claim of the Signora Poet has found among the
best and ablest lawyers in Italy, we think it likely that the ability, zeal, and
learning displayed by the author of this pamphlet (' Woman and the Prac-
tice of Law'), if turned in the direction of amendatory legislation, would
put a woman's right to practice law in Italy beyond cavil." 1 am told that
Signora Poet, while waiting for legal recognition of her right to practice, is
occupying a professorship of law in the University of Bologna.
A few years since an attempt was made to admit women to the legal pro-
fession in Russia. A Russian lady, writing on the subject, says : " After the
reforms in our judiciary and the establishment of the order of advocates,
some law offices employed women. Professors were invited to lecture on law
before the women courses at St. Petersburg, and some women went abroad
to study the science in foreign universities. But the government forbade
lawyers to accept their services as clerks, and the movement was nipped in
the bud. * * * The law society of St. Petersburg counts among its mem-
bers Miss Evreninova, who took her degree of Doctor of Laws at Paris."
But because of her sex she is denied the right to practice.
In gleaning facts to report to this honorable Council what has been accom-
plished by women in the legal profession, I addressed the ministers of for-
eign legations in the United States, asking about woman's opportunities for
studying and following this profession in the countries represented by them.
From the answers which gave information I extract the following:
" Women in France may attend the lectures given at the law schools, but, so
far, they can not be admitted^as attorneys, and, therefore, can not practice
the legal profession." " Women are admitted to the law schools of Sweden
and Norway ; but, so far as known to me, no demand for admission to
Professions. 179
the legal profession has as yet been made by a woman in the said countries."
"In the Austrian- Hungarian empire women are not admitted to the law
schools, and can, therefore, not exercise the legal profession." " In Den-
mark women are not admitted to the legal profession, and so far as I know
no female student ever frequented our only law school at the University of
Copenhagen." "There is neither a case of a woman entering the law
schools nor following the legal profession in Brazil." " Never heard of any
woman having graduated as a lawyer in Mexico." '■* In Germany women
are — at least at some universities — admitted to the regular courses and lec-
tures ; but they are, so far as my knowledge reaches, never admitted to the
exercise of the legal profession." "There is no prohibition in the Argen-
tine Republic in regard to the admission of women to the law schools or
to the practice of law, but up to the present time none have been admitted
to either." " I know only of one Swiss lady who studied law, Mrs. E.
Kempin, who was a student of the University of Zurich from 1884 to 1887,
and who acquired the title of a doctor juris utriusque with great distinction in
1887. But the laws of the canton of Zurich prevent Mrs. Kempin from
entering the bar of this canton. Her address is Frau Doctor Kempin, Flun-
turn, Zurich, Switzerland." "1 do not know of any women having been
admitted to the legal profession in the Hawaiian Kingdom, though I do not
think there is any legal obstacle to such admission. A young woman from
Hawaii, the daughter of one of our circuit judges, is studying law at the
University of Michigan with the view of practicing law in Hawaii."
• We are anticipating that among the results of our "Woman's Interna-
tional Bar Association " will be concerted action to open the doors of law
schools still closed against women and to secure the right of admission to all
ranks of the profession for our legal sisterhood in other lands. We believe
women are not only as capable of learning and applying legal principles as
men, but also areas capable of practicing successfully in the court-room, and
are as well fitted by nature for doing so as men. This we know is a very
advanced position to take, but are not women as well qualified for judging
of minute details as men? Are not women as persistent in efforts? Are
they not endowed with as much power of endurance ? Great physical
strength is not required. Is not woman's sense of justice as fully developed ?
Is not her intuitive faculty as alert? If so, are not these the essential qual-
ities required to fit one for the highest and truest practice of the legal pro-
fession ? There has not been time enough yet for a woman to develop into
an Erskine or Burke, an O'Connell or Curran, a Webster or Choate. But
few men have done so if history correctly records. Woman has made a fair
beginning and is determined to push on and upward, keeping pace with her
brother along the way until with him she shall have finally reached the
highest pinnacle of legal fame.
180 International Council of Women.
Miss Anthony. The next speaker is the Rev. Ada C. Bowles, of Massa-
chusetts, who will tell us of
WOMAN IN THE MINISTRY.
Mrs. Bowles. Woman in the ministry is not a modern innovation, as
many think, nor is it an intrusion of woman upon a sphere of action sacred
to the masculine half of humanity. According to the world's most ancient
records, the first student of moral ethics and preacher of the truth thus
learned was a woman. This primitive school of divinity was established in
a garden called Eden, which a man was commanded to " dress and keep "
as a task fitted to his muscular ability. But the Perfect Wisdom said "it is
not good that the man should be alone," and made him a "helpmeet,"
adapted to lift his thoughts from the seen and known to the unseen and un-
known.
Following the significant fable, this woman "help-meet" "saw" that the
" knowledge of good and evil would make one wise." Eagerly she plucked
the golden apple of this royal knowledge, ate of it, and with true, conjugal
love called her husband and gave him a share. But, alas ! his capacity for
swallowing a saving truth was too limited even as now, and the apple would
not down, but held ever since in his throat, explains much of his subsequent
behavior. Ever-blessed mother Eve, however, digested and assimilated her
apple, and thereby was made to see more clearly the moral distinctions by
which the race rises to higher levels. Continuing the reading of the early
history of the race, we, note that in spite of hedging law and custom woman
continued to use her prerogative of leading upward in song, prophecy, and
teaching or preaching, as we now call it.
Just how Huldah opened for herself the school of the prophets and made it
coeducational we can not tell, but we know she ranked all spiritual direc-
tors in a certain national crisis. And the sermon of King Lemuel's mother,
in the last chapter of Proverbs, is unsurpassed as an exhortation to high
manhood and womanhood. Then came woman's emancipator, Jesus of Naz-
areth. Women became his eager pupils, his ardent disciples and preachers,
side by side with the men he had called to the work. Paul mentions many
of them by name as his beloved co-laborers in the Lord — Priscilla, Phebe,
Persis, Tryphena, and Tryphosa. The house of Phillip gave four daughters
to the Christian ministry, we are also told. Not only did Empress Helena,
by the conversion of her son, make Christianity the religion of Rome, but
other royal mothers, wives and sisters brought England, Spain, France, Rus-
sia, Hungary, and Poland under Christian rule. Through the Middle Ages
princesses of the blood sought the cloister, that by learning they might serve
the religion they so prized. Women read Hebrew, wrote Greek, published
and defended theses, and harangued popes in Latin. Eloquent young girls
preached crusades to Christian princes. One of the three best ancient copies
of the Scriptures is the work of a pious Greek woman of the fifth century.
Professions. 181
Though Apasia could surpass the orators she made, including Pericles; though
Diotima could teach Socrates the divine philosophy, and Cornelia be counted
the first philosopher in Rome, the level of womanhood was little affected
thereby.
We read that woman was the last work of creative skill which pro-
ceeded in orderly steps from the lowest up to the highest and most per-
fect form. Yet even now are to be found men who imply in pulpit and
platform utterances the absurdity that God in making woman reversed the
whole order of creation that he might make a good cook and nurse for man.
By virtue of her creation, her natural endowments, her historic record,
woman might claim the exclusive right to the pulpit now that she possesses
equal educational advantages, but she is more modest than this. She asks
only an equal encouragement and opportunity to enter its long-closed doors
and speak the message in her heart.
Shall ecclesiastical courts forbid still, and upon what ground ? I do not
claim to be very logical, but when statisticians give us such facts as these
I will mention, and print them for the eyes of all women, I am simply
dazzled by their brilliant conclusion that men, and men only, are to the pul-
pit born. Hear this: 95 per cent, of the unchaste are men ; 95 percent,
of the drunkards are men j 95 percent, of criminals are men ; 75 per cent, of
the paupers are men; ergo, all preachers of purity, sobriety, honesty, indus-
try, and high morality should be men. " Logic is logic, that's all I say."
The census of 1880 gives but 165 ordained women in a population of
60,000,000. The only evangelical denominations which have ordained
women to their ministry are the Protestant Methodist and the Christian (Bap-
tist). The first of these has ordained but one, Annie H. Shaw. Twenty-five
years ago the Universalist denomination ordained Olympia Brown, after her
graduating from its theological schools. Thirty-five years ago Antoinette
L. Brown was ordained as an independent preacher, but not by authority of
the Unitarian denomination, which, later, has ordained a small number.
The present Year Book of the Universalist Church gives thirty-three
women, nearly all of whom, as well as those in the Unitarian Church, are
settled and successful pastors.
The immorality of our great centers of population is a growing menace to
the peace of society, and how to deal with it, an ever-increasing problem.
I look to a consecrated ministry to solve it. Not by scores, but by
hundreds, should women, who now constitute three-quarters of our churches,
knock at the doors of theological seminaries and demand entrance that they
may prepare for the ministry.
Miss Anthony. I now have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs.
Martha R. Field, of New Orleans, who is better known to the readers of the
daily Picayune of that city, as " Catharine Cole."
Mrs. Field. It is my honor to represent at this Council an association
182 International Council of Women.
which was founded on sentiment. The Woman's International Press Asso-
ciation should have members on every country weekly and great daily news-
paper in all civilized lands, with opportunities for influencing millions of
readers in all progressive and philanthropic works. The ancient sentiment
of patriotism is yielding to the modern sentiment of philanthropy. The one
means love of fatherland — the other of mankind. In ancient days, when a
man was wrecked on a foreign coast, he was either murdered, enslaved, or
held for ransom. Nowadays, in this country, he is welcomed to a homestead
and all the rights of an American citizen, with the Army, the Navy, and the
great heart of the American people to sustain him. That is a distinct mark
of progress on the dial of time.
The best that modern science has done is to promote the democratic ten-
dency everywhere. Having determined that one human being is the brother
of all others in the eyes of a common Father, we are beginning here in
America, to recognize the other fact, that a distinction of sex is not a neces-
sary distinction of capacity or ability in the active work of the world. We
of the New World are conscious of the fact that the most serious problems
of the Old World have been relegated to us for solution. The energetic,
self-dependent women of this country are finding employment in every
branch of industry and commerce. It merely happens that in journalism
we have had the best opportunity to write our names in enduring letters
and to command respect instead of soliciting toleration.
The advancement of women in the world everywhere has been through
all ages coeval with the most glorious triumphs of civilization. Every advance
women make here is met with a ready response in Europe, or vice versa.
No territorial lines divide the common heart of womanhood or bar that touch
of nature that makes the whole world kin. We in America have led, and are
willing to follow; and we gladly invite the counsel of foreign journalists in
regard to the practical duties of our profession. Woman in journalism has
come to stay. What are her duties, then ? What has mankind the right to
expect from her toward the betterment of current literature ? First of all,
good taste — the second conscience of the sex — grace, style, every artistic
attraction that is not meretricious ; second, in logical order, but first in im-
portance, purity. We have not gone into journalism to take the place of
the politician, the statesman, the savant, but to spread the influence of
Christian firesides — the aims of a broad philanthropy, over the modern world.
Hundreds of women belong to this great Press Association. Some of them
are here to-night, and many are far from here at work by busy desks in the
sweet security of their homes or in the equal security of their newspaper
offices. They may or they may not wear on their breasts the white, the red,
or the yellow ribbon of the new legion of honor, but wherever they are their
pens and services should be dedicated to just the fine and simple sentiments
of honesty and purity.
Professions. 183
The following paper is from Marion A. McBride, of Boston,
Secretary of the Woman's International Press Association :
WOMEN IN JOURNALISM.
The prominent position taken by women at present is due to the pressure
of public opinion, which has forced many into the front rank who have for
years worked quietly and devotedly in the background. It is not due to
any paramount demand ; but, like a panorama, where every figure has its
place, woman's turn has come. Underlying the social structure, touching
life in all its relations, woman has ever held a place which was peculiarly her
own ; but broader education, more of physical culture, a general coming
out into the sunshine of the world, brings woman into prominence as never
before. Women in journalism have made a good record. * * *
In 1772 Clementine Reid printed and edited the Virginia Gazette, a paper
devoted to the Colonial cause, and two years later Mrs. H. Boyle started a
Royalist paper bearing the same name. Mrs. Reid's paper was the first in
the United States to publish the Declaration of Independence. In the face
of these facts journalism was not considered a profession open to women.
Since 1850 women have been editing departments in weekly papers with
success. For the past twenty years they have been placed upon the repor-
torial and correspondent staff of daily papers, until to-day it is the excep-
tion to find any paper — daily, weekly, or monthly — without a woman doing
either editorial or reportorial work. There seems to be a pervading feeling
that certain things can be done better by a woman than by a man, and the
press, highly sensitive to public sentiment, meets this demand for news and
feminine views of affairs by securing the work direct from those interested.
When women take up any line of business they are more isolated in their
work than men in the same position. To meet the need of this isolation,
to render more complete the work of women by putting them in close
communication, one with another, the Woman's National Press Asso-
ciation was formed in New Orleans May 13, 1885. The object of the asso-
ciation, as defined in the platform, is " to provide a medium of communica-
tion between the journalists of the country, securing all the benefits that
result from organized effort. Such information as is continually needed by
writers will always be rendered available, and new avenues will be opened to
individuals for journalistic work. Innumerable benefits arise from mutual
help and encouragement. One aim of the association is to forward the in-
terests of the working women of this country in every possible way."
This association has grown rapidly from the date of organization, and
May 13, 1887, its character was changed from National to International, with
the following officers : President, Mrs. Eliza J. Nicholson, New Orleans, La. ;
Vice-Presidents, Mrs. Augusta Chadz, Melbourne, Australia; Mrs. E. J.
Bocock, Longreach, Brisbone, Queensland ; Miss Mary M. Mullen, London ;
Secretary, Marion A. McBride, Boston, Mass. ; Honorary Members, Mrs.
184 International Council of Women.
Mary A. Livermore, Clara Barton, Mrs. Frank Leslie. This was the first com-
prehensive grouping of women national in character, because its mem-
bers were drawn from many States ; its interests thrown like a net-work
at once over all women's work, it became the magic chain to draw forth
reports of woman's achievements. Women, scarce strong enough to stand
alone, have been helped into successful work.
The International Association has a membership of nearly 400, scattered
over the United States, Mexico, and parts of Europe. To the loving work
of Mary Clement Leavitt, of Boston, now on a tour around the world for the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, js due the complete international
character of an organization which is doing good for women, society, the
home, school, and State, with hundreds of workers scattered over the world
in close telegraphic communication, bound together by common interests.
The Woman's Press Associations, strong, practical, and broad, as they stand
to-day, are the helpers of every good cause, the friends of every one in need,
the open door through which all womanly work can pass into public sym-
pathy, the avenue through which educational work can be enlarged until the
grand plans of the grandest workers are accomplished facts. To managing
editors of leading papers of the United- States and to the officers of the Asso-
ciated Press we are deeply indebted for many acts of kindness, for help when-
ever asked, in connection with woman's work in journalism.
Miss Anthony. I am happy now to introduce to you a representative of
the National Press Association, Mrs. Aurelia Hadley Mohl.
AD IDEA AND ITS RESULTS.
Mrs. Mohl. " Occasionally," says Carlyle, " God lets loose a thinker on
the world ; then there is a commotion." This is equally true of an idea.
Brain and hand labor are coexistent with humanity. Men and women have
fulfilled, individually, the doom to earn their bread by the sweat of their
brow from its utterance until now. But organized labor is the idea of the
nineteenth century. The many skeins of the labor rope are being twisted
into a cable, which already nearly girdles the earth, and which is destined to
crush its life out should hate twist the threads, or to bind humanity in per-
petual unity if love shall twine the cords.
Organization, like other ideas, grew up from what we are pleased to call
the lower stratum of society. Each century shows the growth and fruitage
of some idea. Now we see the stirring of the grand thought of brotherhood
contained in the command, "Be ye one, even as I and My Father are one."
It was not until this century had long passed its majority that the organi-
zation idea grew tall enough to reach the sacred seclusion bf woman's sphere.
It may seem strange that the idea was so long reaching the women of the
press, but a close inquiry reveals the reasons. The tendency of their work
is unsociable, its demands, especially upon newspaper writers, constant,
imperative, and exclusory. Many of these women have home cares which
Professions. 185
claim and generally receive their best thought and attention, and the amount
of brain and hand work they accomplish day after day is simply marvelous.
They have no time to hear or see any new thing outside the daily round.
If one can afford a week's holiday, she finds her tired brain refusing to
receive the added straw of a single thought, and demanding rest by lapsing
into utter vacuity. The wonder is that the idea ever reached them at all.
But it did, and took shape — as was most fitting — in the capital and brain-
center of the country. Realizing the fact — since then so well stated by Dr.
Leech — that " ten ladies working methodically in a society can accomplish
as much as fifty without organization," six correspondents met in that
kindly and pleasant nursery for woman's ideas, the Red Parlor of the Riggs
House, on July 10, 1882, and organized the association I have the honor to
represent this evening. It was the first Woman's Press Association the world
had ever known.
What an army of pen women there is in the world ! Fancy these writers
formed into companies, drilled to keep step, to march shoulder to shoulder
and to use their mighty little weapons in the sacred cause of cleanliness and
purity and truth ! One could almost see the soiled hosts of ribaldry and
scandal and venality fleeing before the white pens of this irresistible army.
Yes, it was a grand thought, and its time had fully come. The infant idea
embodied in the Woman's National Press Association, though unprotected
by any prohibition on similar industries, lived and throve ; passed safely
through the measles and whooping-.cough stages, and cut its wisdom-teeth
with much pain and worry. It has now forty names on its roll, classified
into sixteen correspondents, twelve contributors, seven authors, three edi-
tors, and four doing editorial writing. It has members from every section
of this country and from foreign lands. But if this association had died in
its first year, its work would not have ended. "The things which are seen
are temporal, but the unseen things are eternal." The idea it embodies is
not only immortal, but active and progressive, and its results shall multiply
and strengthen until our literary women shall be of one mind and one spirit
through constant communion one with the other.
The association formed in New Orleans in 1885, and which is so ably rep-
resented by the friend who has preceded me, was the first apparent result.
This was followed the same year by the New England and Ohio Associations
and the first Illinois Association, but this died and the present one was
formed the following year. Another, organized in Indiana, also perished and
has not yet been replaced. The Woman's Press Association of the South
is now, I think, in its third year, and numbers about one hundred. Statis-
tics furnished me by the secretaries of the New England and Illinois Associ-
ations are as follows : the New England Association numbers fifty-eight, of
whom twenty-five are editors, two editorial writers, twelve correspondents,
13
186 International Council of Women.
nineteen contributors, and two business managers. The Illinois Association
held its first meeting for permanent organization January 7, 1886. This is a
strong-limbed young giantess, vigorous, energetic and practical. Her report
is : members, 101, of whom thirty-one are editors or doing editorial work;
forty-four correspondents ; twelve authors and ten publishers. * * *
All Southern Press Associations admit both sexes on terms of perfect
equality, which retards the organization of women's associations in that
favored land. Literature is one avocation which has never closed its doors
to women. The "republic of letters" places many restrictions about the
ballot, but sex is not one of them.
Ours is a noble calling, my sisters of the press, and "noblesse oblige"
should be our motto. The title of literary woman is never more to be the
synonym for slovenly attire, or loose morals, or neglected homes. Divinely
ordained teachers and trainers of humanity, women must write only true and
pure. The long pathway of history and tradition is brightened by woman's
genius and melodious with woman's voice in song or story. Miriam and
Deborah were poets, and the woman of Tokoa a short story-writer. Women
sat with the wise men of Egypt in their great schools of religion and science,
and occupied professors' chairs in the most famous academies of Greece and
Rome. But it was left to the latter part of this great century to combine
and organize the subtle and varied qualities of woman's mind, and to unite
them by the electric current of sympathy in the divine work of purifying the
press and lifting it to its true plane of dignity.
Miss Anthony. Now we will have a short speech from Mrs. Matilda B.
Carse, of Chicago.
THE WOMAN'S TEMPERANCE PUBLICATION ASSOCIATION.
Mrs. Carse. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union evolved from
that most unique of crusades, the women against the saloon. And the
Woman's Temperance Publishing House evolved from the Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Union as a most natural sequence. Some fourteen years
ago the officers of the National Society saw the necessity of having an organ
as a source of communication between themselves and the local unions.
They had no money, but they had unselfish devotion, and they said : "We
will start an eight-page monthly paper, edit it ourselves, charge fifty cents per
year for it, and after a time, when the subscription list increases sufficiently,
we will be able to pay for an editor and publisher." Accordingly a few
devoted women, with Miss Frances E. Willard as leader, started Our Union,
which was the organ of the society for seven years. Those who have had
any experience in publishing a paper, starting it even on a good moneyed
basis, know what uphill work it is and what a length of time it takes before
it becomes self-sustaining. Only such persons can fully understand what a
burden these heroic women had to bear, besides being continually harassed
by debt, and forced at each annual convention to make a plea for money to
Professions. 187
pay up last year's deficit. Miss Willard and others fully realized how per-
fectly inadequate such a small monthly sheet was to rightly represent such a
growing cause. But in those primitive days of the association, with the
Southern and far Western States and Territories still unorganized, the leaders
of the movement had little time to come to a clear understanding as to the
best method of founding an organ on a sound financial basis that would
worthily represent their cause.
A woman, not among the leaders of this movement, except in her own
city of Chicago, where she took an active part in temperance, pondered
deeply over the need of temperance literature and the necessity of having a
large weekly paper on a footing which would insure both literary and finan-
cial success. She had seen, since the commencement of the reform, hun-
dreds of temperance papers start that would flourish for a few months and
then die out because they had no financial backing. She was profoundly
impressed that ii was her duty to raise a large sum of money to start such a
paper. Miss Willard's name was at this time beginning to be widely known
not only as a reformer but as a writer. She felt if she could secure her as
editor it would be the means of making the paper a success. In the summer
of 1879 sne took a long journey purposely to meet Miss Willard and confer
with her on the matter. Miss Willard entered heartily into the plan, but on
account of other pressing work she could not undertake the editorship. Miss
Willard's refusal of the editorship did not, however, make the projector of.
the plan give up the undertaking. In the following year she, with six other
ladies, incorporated the Woman's Temperance Publication Association, in
Chicago, of which she has been the president ever since. The capital stock
at first was $5,000 ; shares, $25. The object, as stated in the paper of incor-
poration, was the publishing of a weekly temperance paper, and any other
publications the association might deem desirable. One of the by-laws pre-
cludes men from holding stock in the company. It states that no person
can hold stock except women or members of the Woman's Christian Tem-
perance Union.
The first three or four years the work was at times full of discouragement —
more money going out than coming in ; those who should have been its
friends prophesying that it never could be made self-sustaining. The pro-
jectors of it stood by it faithfully, however. Men began to see there was
money in it, and some wanted to buy large amounts of stock and secure the
controlling interest in it. Much as they needed money, these women would as
soon have thought of plucking out their eyes as of letting men, moved by sordid
considerations, have a controlling interest in it. The stock was increased
from $5,000 to $15,000; then to $25,000. The last increase, which occurred
the first of this year, is to $50,000. The corporation saw $16,000, over
receipts, slip through their fingers before the tide turned. In 1884 the gain
was greater than the outlay, and in 1885 they paid stockholders four per cent.
188 International Council of Women.
dividend; in 1886, five per cent., and in 1887, six per cent. They could
have declared a much larger dividend than this, but they desired to use the
money in machinery in order to increase their printing facilities.
January 15, 1880, the first publication of the Woman's Temperance Press
Association made its appearance. It was a sixteen-page weekly temperance
paper, The Signal; its editor and publisher, Mrs. Mary B. Willard. It
was started in a most modest way, desk room being secured in the rooms of
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The paper from the first
became a favorite, as it could not well do otherwise with such a talented
woman as editor. In a few weeks the circulation had so increased that a
publisher had to be engaged. The Signal did not become the national
organ of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union until November, 1882,
when it was consolidated with Our Union, the monthly paper before alluded
to that had been the organ of the National Society for seven years.
The paper has ever since been known as The Union Signal, and has
attained a subscription list of 40,000. It was not until 1884 that the associ-
ation commenced the publication of miscellaneous literature. It now pub-
lishes two weekly papers, five monthly papers, two quarterlies, and a large
line of books (including a number written by Miss Willard), leaflets, pamph-
lets, and music. The association has sent out over 52,000,000 pages of
temperance literature during the past year. Their cash receipts have been,
during 1887, $93,000. Their property is worth over $50,000, consisting of
new machinery and type of the most approved pattern, together with a large
stock of finished and unfinished publications, and good ledger accounts.
They have a staff of six editors, all being women except the editor of ^heir
German temperance paper, Der Deutsch-Amerikaner. The policy of the
board of directors, which consists of eleven women, is to give the prefer-
ence to women in all the different departments of editing and publishing,
if they can do equally as well as men, and to pay them as good wages as
men get. Out of eighty persons employed, fifty are women. When we can
place the $25,000 worth of unsold stock which we now hold, it will put us
in a position to do three times the business we are now doing, and pay a very
handsome dividend to all women who invest. But, better than all, it will sow
millions of temperance leaves over this land, which will be for the healing
of the nation.
Miss Anthony. Allow me to present to you a practical member of the
press, who has carried her paper, single-handed and alone, for five years —
Mrs. Clara B. Colby, of Beatrice, Nebraska, to whom we are all indebted
for the daily Woman 's Tribune, with its full stenographic report of the
proceedings of this Council.
After a few remarks, Mrs. Colby recited the poem of Ella
Dare, "Two in One," when the audience was dismissed.
THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1888.
MORNING SESSION.
ORGAN IZATION.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Vice-President at Large, of the
National Woman Suffrage Association, presiding.
Invocation by Isabella Beecher Hooker, after which the
audience joined in singing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic. "
Mrs. Gage. The subject this morning is organization, and it is one that
has had great influence upon the world in the past. Women have not been
associated in organizations until since the war ; that is, to any very great
extent. Our National Woman's Suffrage Association has never been a close
organization. We have been held together rather by the bonds of principle
than by those of any external law. I well remember the first suffrage con-
vention I ever attended, in the city of Syracuse, in 1852, the question of
organization was discussed, and many who had entered into this agitation
were very much opposed to it. I recall a letter from Angelina Grimk6
Weld, who had been obliged to leave her home because she had denounced
the system of slavery. She deprecated artificial organization, thinking it
rather tended to bind the future as well as the present. Lucy Stone and
Ernestine L. Rose also spoke against it. When our war broke out it created
a very great change throughout the country. There arose the sanitary com-
missions and organizations of many kinds. The first Loyal League organ-
ized in the United States was by women, and from that time various
organizations have grown up throughout the country. You will hear from
others this morning who have inaugurated and carried forward the most
powerful of them, and I hope in the discussion the most liberal spirit will
prevail. While we remember that organizations in a certain way are bene-
ficial, it is equally true that some of the greatest wrongs that have been done
to mankind, both materially and spiritually, have been under the influence
of organization. I have now the pleasure of presenting one who needs no
introduction, whose " Battle Hymn of the Republic " you have just sung,
the President of the Association for the Advancement of Women, Mrs. Julia
Ward Howe.
THE POWER OF ORGANIZATION.
Mrs. Howe. I suppose the human body has from very early times been
much thought of as a model for the body social and politic. The old fable
of the body and the members exemplifies this, as does that adopted symbol-
ism which terms the Christian Church " the Body of Christ." In old En-
190 International Council of Women.
glish, and in new, we use the term body in referring to various aggregations
of men or of women, or both. We do not call a mob a body, for the reason
that it has no permanent organization, but we say a legislative body, a de-
liberative body ; we even say a body of doctrine. Why do we use this sym-
bolical expression ? What does it mean to us ? First, perhaps, a recognized
and recognizable form. A body is something that appears; it has distinct
shape, form, and outline, and one body is distinguished from other bodies.
But this is not enough for our meaning. The term body, as we use it,
symbolically, means something more than a form ; it means a form with a
function, and I think we use the term with a moral as well as a material
significance. The body has various members, through which its. functions
are performed. These are not identical, but relative. They must work in
harmony with each other, and with a constant reference to the central prin-
ciple of life, which inspires and commissions them, and to which they in turn
are bound to minister.
Thus far the symbol is appropriate and expressive ; but as a moral and a
material life only partially parallel each other, we shall find it important
to show when our symbol ceases to express our thought. The human body is
an organism. It did not call itself together. It can not keep itself from
dissolution. The working bodies of human society are organizations. The
elements which compose them are brought together by intelligent effort and
will. They can modify their plans and objects endlessly. They are self-
creating and self-destroying.
Woe to us women if in drawing a plan of organization we forget the laws
which govern organisms. The ant and the bee have each their social mech-
anism, and prosper by obeying its requisitions. The mother tyranny of na-
ture makes them unchangeable. Caring for the safety and prosperity of the
type, she allows its representatives to try' no experiments, run no risks.
What the ant B C did, the ant A D probably does with as little variation as
possible. Into the organisms of human society a principle enters which is
foreign to animal life. Progress is the foremost characteristic of man. His
social organisms must expand, must meet new needs, and take account of
new circumstances, and then must contend for a time with life, and die, if
need be, leaving always their seed in the world, from which, with the new
generations, the new societies are formed.
With all that the imperfections of human wisdom leave for us to divine,
we have yet great reason to rejoice both at the increasing development of
organizing power and the improved aims and spirit of the associations organ-
ized. In the states of Greece, especially in Attica, we see the intense form
of organization, essentially military and self-asserting, the ethics of a local
patriotism, its measure, and inspiration. In the Roman state we see this
power in its extensive form. A larger, a cosmopolitan idea pervades the
mighty empire. The Roman eagles carry on their wings the breath of toler-
Organization. 191
ation. With this, Pilate weakly interposes in behalf of Jesus, but, finding
the Jewish fanaticism so strong, washes his hands of the great responsibility.
The power of civil and military organization, resting upon reasonable law
and useful discipline, conquered the heart of the Old World, and Greece
herself was fain to seek its protection. But in all of these instances the old
proverb of ' ' Two can play at a game ' ' fulfilled itself. The peoples conquered
by military skill, themselves acquired the art of war. The barbarians, out-
witted by civilization, themselves became civilized. The empire crumbles ;
the republic of nations founds itself. Force and fraud go together. Organ-
izations which employ the one must avail themselves of the other. Hence,
military and diplomatic strategy are largely founded upon deceit, and its
weakness is shown in their results, which are constantly shifting and chang-
ing.
The great beneficent organizations of to-day have a deeper foundation —
a more permanent character. The good they seek is wrought at no man's
expense ; for, though all benevolent undertakings cost money, they do not
plunder nor defraud anyone, since it is best for all parties that society should
pay its honest debts. With all that we can derive or do in this line an
immense deficit still remains on the side of might against right. First of
all, let us ask, what organization can do and what it can not. It can so
embody the general interests of humanity as to set them before the world
as taking necessary precedence of merely natural objects and predilections.
It can build a capital of the nation, in which north and south, east and
west, white, black, red, and tawny yellow, may meet, and all may say, "My
capital and my country." In the great names of religion, patriotism, and
morality, it can call together vast assemblies and realize the inspired line of
Shakespeare :
" One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
But, as organization works with human materials, it can not escape the
doom and danger of things unseen. Physical life maintains itself by the
seclusion of forces in the small compass of an animal form. Family life
maintains itself in the seclusion of home. The city must take care of itself
as a city, the state as a state. In other words, the limited, particular ques-
tions of each one's life are so important that they must not be lost sight of
in the work of generalizing ideas. Morality would suffer instead of gaining,
if we should postpone the care of health, the economy of the household,
the administration of our town, village, or district to speculative study or
missionary enterprise. The difficulty of organization, or at least one of its
difficulties, is in the reconciliation of the far and the near, the regulation of
relations between the particular and the general.
Now comes in the power of truth over human hearts. If your central
principle is genuine it will command the currents of conviction from the
northern to the southern extremity. Organization must, therefore, found
192 International Council of Women.
itself upon an universal and availing interest. But this principle enunciated
may turn out to be only a name. The banner of a great cause may be raised
•aloft by wretches whose intention is to betray it. Every sublime word that
men can utter may be used to cheat and juggle with. The more widespread
the enthusiasm the more possible the delusion. How shall we, who must in
everything trust to those who shall act for us, how shall we be able to assure
ourselves that they do act for what we intend and believe in ? This assur-
ance can only be very partially given and very cautiously accepted. The
price of freedom is said to be eternal vigilance. The same price must be
paid for every condition of the public weal. I will name three condi-
tions which must combine to make this vigilance : (i,) we must be loyal
to the name in which we associate; (2,) we must make matters in our
immediate neighborhood conform to it ; (3,) we must assure ourselves of the
character and ability of those who assume to represent it.
No device that I know of in history so well answers these three purposes
as does the combination which our own social system presents : the relig-
ious liberty which is indispensable to moral and intellectual sincerity ; the
general good level of popular education ; and, last and not least, the fact of
universal suffrage. And this brings me the opportunity to salute with honor
those who first saw and dared to say that suffrage in America was only half
universal, and that no man was fully enfranchised whose wife and mother
and daughter did not share his state of freedom. Honor to this great name,
to this great principle of suffrage, this true human instrument in the name
of the divine principle. Everybody's opportunity, everybody's right ; honor
to it in the name of freedom, justice, and humanity.
There are three elements of society which we must consider in any attempt
at organization. We might call them component classes. There is the class
of leaders, small in number, powerful from its correspondence with certain
inherent needs of the body politic. There is the class of the led, powerful in
numbers and in the multiplication of sympathy. This is, by far, the larger
class of the two already mentioned. The third is a class of medium extent,
slow and resolute of movement — a class whose members neither aspire to
lead nor submit to be led. This is a deliberative class. Of the two before
mentioned, the first is autocratic, while the second is democratic. The
class which I have placed between these two is parliamentary. In all organi-
zations the position of this class is very important. The autocratics natu-
rally tend to tyranny. The demos naturally tend to a slavish following.
The parliamentals restrain the one and instruct the other. They are the
safeguards of all liberties. Where their action is unimpeded, autocracy may
make its review with the least danger of exceeding its bounds. But the
demos should look to it that this slow and substantial stratum of character
be not eliminated nor suppressed, for the greatest danger to society lies in
the arbitrary procedure of the autocrat and the thoughtless or passionate
Organization. 193
acquiesence of the demos. Where the parliamentals have fair play this dan-
ger, which always exists, is known and averted.
My belief in this analysis of society has made me distrustful of its would-
be leaders, the people who are nothing if not supreme, and who endeavor
with a fabricated reputation to ensnare the suffrage of the unknowing multi-
tude. Even if they have real power and talent, I look upon their predom-
inance as hurtful to society, and responsible for many of its mischiefs. I
am, therefore, always concerned in the freedom and dignity of the parlia-
mentary body, whose office is to digest and assimilate the various elements
which enter into life and action. Of course, this class is not infallible,
nothing is, but the Divine. It may be cajoled, deceived, it may be bought
and sold, in which case the body politic will come to grief. But in its
honest and intelligent action I find the greatest security for any and all
association.
I have had the honor, for some years past, to be the president of a
modest association which calls itself an "Association for the Advancement
of Women." We hold an annual conference. We have responsible com-
mittees ; we are not heralded here and elsewhere with high-sounding names.
What I claim for our convention is that its action is neither autocratic nor
slavish, but that we have worked in our measure to make it truly represent-
ative. I recognize the merit of much larger associations, and shall look
with interest upon any extensive plans which may grow out of the present
interesting assemblage of women. But my advice to all would be, take care
always to have a strong deliberative body of responsible officers between your
leaders and your led.
The immense distances which our country includes are an element of
weakness which can only be counterbalanced by careful and responsible
work in various localities. What can Florida know about Maine ? Dakota
about Boston and New York ? If the central thought which unites us is a
valid and valuable one, the thoughtful women in Florida, in Canada, in
Colorado, in Utah, will be able to group themselves around it. The office
of our deliberative class will be, first, to see that the central thought is every-
where adequately understood ; secondly, to see that the thinkers and their
conclusions are fairly represented.
I am anxious to say one word here regarding two aspects of association,
which we may term the general and the particular. I value the unity of
feeling and of sympathy which can gather the suffrages of women throughout
the country in favor of any great question of moral advancement, like the
temperance reform, for example. The church universal waves its banner over
us, and we are glad to acknowledge our allegiance to it, but the general
alliance can not take the place of particular alliances made within close
limits of township neighborhoods. In any general alliance some valuable
elements of power are necessarily lost. Personality is for the moment sac-
94 International Council of Women.
rificed to union. We wish to stand with united front when we champion
any large movement, but the divisions and subdivisions of individual policy
and preference have much to do with keeping society up to its true standard.
There are fine, even infinitesimal questions, which can not be properly dis-
pensed with. When the passion for participating in general action over-
sweeps the community too strongly, their critical processes of thought, of
study, if not paralyzed, are at heart discouraged and hindered from bringing
about their proper result. The work of the Woman's Club, on the other
hand, seems to me calculated to remedy the defects inherent in widespread
association. Each club takes up its little burthen, devises its plans of work,
solves its own problems, and fulfills its own tasks. The influence which they
have already exerted in various communities is very great, and in the main,
I must think, very good.
We have been summoned here under the prestige of a very attractive and
inclusive name — that of an International Council of Women. Surely, from
our coming together much good ought to result. National limitations and
prejudices may be effaced, and a broader and more hopeful good-will may
hereafter unite our efforts for public and private weal in many a remote lo-
cality. But let us go back from this enlargement to work all the more in-
dustriously within our own bounds. The limitation of the home is a precious
one for us women, seeing that home, which is conceded to be our special
province, is at once college and court, church and sanitarium. The public
health, the public religion, the public morality, are all dependent upon the
intimate springs and sources of private life. Local clubs and associations
enlarge the limits of the home, still keeping the precious aroma of individual
feeling and character. If the home and the club are faithfully administered,
with due regard to the claims and gifts of each and every one, then the great
meetings which may be called from time to time will have a. genuine office
and outcome.
A point to bear strongly in mind in the present connection is the
heredity of organizations. Christ, perhaps, thought of this when he said
to his disciples: "Other men have labored, and ye have entered into their
labors." Unquestionably the Jewish Church, iconoclast as was its great
founder, inherited much from what the Bible calls the wisdom of Egypt, and,
at a later day, from the religious philosophy of the Persians. The Christian
Church inherited from Judaism. Nor is this inheritance confined to relig-
ious bodies. Philanthropic and humanitarian organizations also inherit
values which are constant and steadfast in the moral world. To name only
a single instance, let us acknowledge how much the Woman Suffrage move-
ment inherited from the Anti-Slavery organizations. I love to look through
the vista of glories which lies behind us to the faithful souls who, from cen-
tury to century, have kept and handed down the truth and its methods.
Very momentous to us, my dear sisters, should be the thought of the organ-
ization which the generation following us will inherit from our own.
Organization. 195
The business world is full of organized robbery. The political world is
full of organized injustice. The religious world is organized to uphold in-
spiration and intolerance. The military world is the stronghold of whole-
sale murder and spoliation. Who will organize a brave and patriotic resist-
ance to all these evils? Can we women with white hair go peacefully to our
graves leaving the young generations bound hand and foot in the slavery of
evil institutions? I hope that from this Council a new influence will go out,
that so wide an agreement among the mothers and daughters of men will
leave its mark upon the laws and customs which we shall bequeath to posterity.
The doctrine of redeeming love is the great glory of Christianity. This
is simply the doctrine that evil is overcome of good, and that the great vic-
tories of the Divine are the victories of love. Now, my dear ones, this love
for humanity which God puts into our cradles as his initial gift, which puts
itself at interest in the training of family life, which receives in the church
the mission to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,
is the love which is to redeem the world from its greed, its injustice, its bar-
barism. Let this be the key-note of all that we shall attempt in thinking
and acting in common. Out of it alone can come the great moral and
social harmonies, whose armies usher in the new heaven and new earth,
wherein dwelleth righteousness.
Mrs. Gage. I have great pleasure in introducing Miss Mary F. Eastman,
another delegate from the Association for the Advancemeut of Women.
Miss Eastman. Dr. Holmes, over the tea-cups, has lately added a beati-
tude to those which are canonical, and says: " Blessed are those who say
our good things for us." On that theory I shall have to confess that blessed
is my predecessor. I was sure she would say them all, and say them so that
we may feel, as some one else has said, our ow 1 rejected thoughts come back
to us with a certain alienated majesty. I have had long experience in this.
I have, therefore, thought it best not to read from manuscript, which would
have given me the privilege of keeping within my prescribed limits, but to
add what random thpughts have come to me as supplemental to what my
friend has so well said.
In organization we recognize a relatively high state of development, and
know also that development increases through organization. The lowest
matter in the scale is that which is unorganized. We speak of it as inert.
Organized matter suggests activity. Organization means to an end — for a
purpose. It tells of use. It hints of service. Duty inheres in it. Organ-
ization means that facts are specialized, and that thereby we increase the
points of contact with the outer world. It means, also, that each part fits
harmoniously into all the others. This we may apply to ttte physical, and
no less to the social, world; and in the latter nothing indicates better how
far we are developed than how far we are fitted to combine with others for
noble uses.
196 International Council of Women.
Nothing has more discouraged progress than the commonly-held belief
that this was true of only half the race ; that the other half — the better share,
as they were in the habit of calling it — should cherish self-seeking narrow-
ness and exclusiveness. You recollect, perhaps, some years ago, in i\\z Popu-
lar Science Monthly, a very learned article, which went to prove that women
were centripetal and men centrifugal. In fancy it was argued almost to a
demonstration. I remember that it came to so fine a point as this : That
women were actually said to button their dresses centripetally, while men
buttoned their clothes centrifugally. I think, my friends, that with all of us
this theory must long since have been abandoned. We must recognize that
variety is essential to life ; that largeness is our aim, not narrowness ; that
reaching out to others should be the law of our being.
Nothing is more a feature of the time, perhaps, than the tendency to form
organizations. We have come to regard humanity, not as complete or ex-
pressed in individuals, but as a solidarity. We have learned that what serves
one serves all ; that nothing that is not for the general good can possibly be
good for individuals. As an outgrowth of this has come the tendency to
clasp hands. Rev. Edward Everett Hale has said well that there is not so
sad a word in the whole English language as "apart ; " none so blessed as
"together." In obedience to such a consciousness we are reaching out
more and more to others, and this is indicated by the multiplication of asso-
ciations for common work or purpose. We are coming to comprehend as a
living reality that "where two or three are gathered together in My name
there am I — the Christ — with them." Whenever one of us touches heart
and hand with another we are mindful of an inflaming of the spirit which we
do not get alone. The value of organizations depends, of course, upon their
aim and the spirit in which they are carried out. The power is that of the
compound lever, which^easily becomes a crushing if it be not a consecrated
one. Witness the trusts which so grievously threaten the community, so that
the Boston Transcript says "it is easier to organize a trust than it is to trust
an organization." * * *
In association, feeling, and especially selfish feeling, gets the least possible
chance. If it comes to the front, as it is almost sure to do, it shows itself
repulsive even to the possessor. " I didn't think I looked like that," said a
little girl, in a dissatisfied tone, as she looked at her photograph. In our
work together, when we are off guard as to appearances, our character por-
traits get taken instantaneously ; and, unawares, we sometimes get views of
ourselves which are not flattering, though they may be serviceable. Kinder-
garten is the place where it is systematically cultivated on the true basis.
Sometimes I think that about all the legal complications, the personal antag-
onisms, and the confusions of the world come from this lack of a clear sense
of the line beyond which I may not, without intrusion, approach you, and
you may not approach me. If we could once settle this, what a world of
Organization. 197
interference, of impertinence, and of meddlesomeness which sum up so many
of the banes of life would disappear. Let me, or, if need be, teach me to
remember that thus far and no farther may I come to you even with help or
suggestion, and that these are to be accepted or rejected at your discretion
or option. If I press farther, just there your absolute right, I had almost
said your obligation, to resist, both for your sake and mine, begins.
In organization most of us discover something which we have heretofore
lacked, in which, my friends, I think we find a supplement of our imperfect
selves. None of us, I suppose, has ever undertaken movements of importance
without misgivings from a sense of lack of power. Measuring ourselves
against the task it is sure to prove the larger. How inspiriting, then, it is
to clasp hands with others set to the same purposes and possessing, perhaps,
the very gifts we lack. We feel that together we have become an electric bat-
tery, and that the charge of one is the charge of all. How many times in my
own experience have the discouragements all vanished when I came into my
organization and found my incompleteness rounded out by the powers of
others. I think we must consider that we are not so much individual
people, living for and in ourselves, but that all of us make the one, and that
individuals are but specialized members of this great body.
The other day I saw a marvelous picture in stone — a mosaic as exquisitely
shaded as if by the artist's brush — here a bit of solid color melted into the
blue of the sky, there another gave life to the tree and helped to suggest the
human figure, and all combined harmoniously. So we are all helping to build
humanity, bit by bit, and it matters very little which part of the picture
falls to us, but it greatly concerns us not to mar the whole. In such a view,
we are sure not to miss the lessons both of self-respect and the respect due to
humanity. In the attrition of opinion, which comes necessarily in organized
work, it may be thought that antagonisms are likely to be developed. So far
as I have observed associations of women, the result has been quite otherwise.
The necessity of viewing matters from a common standpoint, tends to gen-
erous effort to observe from the point of view of others, and to give fair con-
sideration to argument — a habit which can not fail to broaden the mind and
quicken the sympathies. I could open to your observation such counselings
of committees as it has been my privilege to sit with for the past few days, and
many a time before, where earnestness of advocacy combined with courtesy,
where fairness characterized the judgment, and where each seemed, at least,
to be " in honor preferring one another."
Men gain by their study of public interests, an invaluable training in ques-
tions of right as between man and man, as well as of abstract justice, from
which women are, most unfortunately, generally debarred. Nothing is bet-
ter for us than to be driven back to principles. And this brings me to a
point which I think of paramount importance for all to learn — that is, a
quick sense of respect for the limitations of personal rights. While this
198 International Council of Women.
should be held a most valuable part of all training, I think only the kinder-
garten gives it in a systematic way. * * *
Mrs. Gage. I have the pleasure of presenting Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz,
of Boston, who represents the Woman's Educational and Industrial Union
of that city.
Mrs. Diaz. Taking mankind generally, one-half as the complement of
the other half, it is not well in carrying on the world's work that the man
element should alone be prominent and predominant; you want both. It
is not well that man should be alone. I was at a meeting of the Women's
Press Association in Boston a little while ago, and men were there as guests.
Every editor present testified to this — that journalism was much improved
since women had come to take part in it ; and that is one broad principle
that will run through everything — through all our charities, through all our
institutions. On our boards of insane asylums, charitable institutions, and
lying-in hospitals, it is not well that man should be alone ; we must have the
woman element in them. Yet, if you will look at the reports of children's
hospitals, asylums of all kinds, and a great many institutions where women
and children are brought, you will find no woman's name among the direct-
ors. All are controlled by men.
The world, as you might say, has been allowed to go on with a part of
itself, and you might compare it to a gig trying to run on one wheel,
dragging the other after it. What you want is to take up that other wheel,
put it in its place and let it help carry, instead of being drawn along. The
first step is to elevate woman. This is the aim of the Women's Educational
and Industrial Union, 74 Boylston street, Boston. The institution is free to
all women and open from nine in the morning until nine at night. We have
our placards in the railroad stations, and often women come to us who have
just landed on our shores. Any woman who goes to our union will find a
safe place to ask questions, whether she wants advice or local information,
whether she wants companionship or protection. My object in coming here
is to speak not so much of the work of that institution as to wake an interest
in it, and help establish a system to have one in every city and town.
Our society has a committee of ladies who, each in turn, sits at the desk,
to act as lady of the house and answer all questions, and is sort of general
directory, giving local information in relation to all institutions of whatever
nature, public or private. Then we have a library and reading-room, to which
all women are welcome. The Entertainment Committee has weekly recep-
tions, to which all who choose may come. The Employment Committee
gets situations as far as practicable for those out of employment. Besides
the regular persons having charge of carrying on all the business, there is a
supplemental committee of ladies who come one at a time to talk with the
women who apply for work and give them their sympathy and friendship.
The Industrial Department disposes of what is made by women. There are
now over 700 consignors. Last year there was over $26,000 worth sold, the
larger part being food.
Organization. 199
The Employment Committee gets situations, not only for domestic serv-
ants, but for what are called the higher employments. Connected with
the industrial department is a lunch-room, where food can be bought at
moderate prices, and where any woman or girl may bring her own lunch.
The protective department gets the wages of women who are defrauded of
them. We have lawyers who work without charge, and every woman, no
matter how little is kept from her, is protected. We are now known so well
as to have become a terror in the city. Men and women who owe their
employees sometimes pay the debt under the threat of being brought to the
Women's Union. Then we try to benefit women in every possible way.
Ultimately, we hope to reach them in jails, in prisons, in police stations,
wherever they need the friendship, protection and sympathy of woman ;
that is what we mean to do. There are two underlying principles to our
work. One is, we meet on a human basis. We are not organized to reach
any particular class. We meet for mutual help. Usually, when people wish
to do good, they think they must go down and seek the repulsively bad ; but
badness is badness wherever found, and we recognize that all have needs, and
that those needs may exist among the fashionable and well-to-do, as well as
among those of the lower ranks. We think the rich are just as well worth
saving as the poor, and we deplore the waste of energy that exists among
well-to-do women. We think it just as much the purpose of philanthropy to
take a rich woman who is devoted to frivolities, and arouse in her a purpose
to help her kind and bring out all that is good in her, as to take a poor
woman and give her a way of earning her own living or teaching her to read.
There is a stigma put on a certain kind of sin, and a woman is sometimes
called a fallen woman. Oh, my friends, she is a fallen woman who falls into
conceit ; she is a fallen woman who falls from integrity ; she is a fallen
woman who falls into selfishness — that is degradation, wherever existing —
and those must be helped to rise, and we must call them together and help
them to feel their needs. If you will look at the statements of the biogra-
phers you will always find in the dedication, if it is a great man, that he
owed all he was to his mother. The orators, the press, the pulpits, and the
platforms are always saying the woman of to-day is the queen of to-mor-
row. The hand that rocks the cradle guides the world. Let us add that,
therefore, which the oracles never think to add — give this queen a royal
preparation for her royal duties. That is just what we want to do. In saying
this I by no means ignore the responsibilities of the fathers, but the mothers do
have the more abiding opportunities ; they have the early chances for forming
the character.
Character is king, it is the royal thing ; you must make way for it. Take
this little chain, individuals make the country, character makes the individual,
mothers have the large part of the work of making character;, therefore
elevate the mothers ; bring them together and make them think. Thought
200 International Council of Women.
is the power that rules the world. Therefore, every gathering of thoughtful
women" leads on the work, and this is one of the offices of our society ; we
have what we call coteries where we come together to discuss the problems
of the day. I want one of these societies in every city as a center of enlight-
enment, sending out its influence over the nation and finally over the world.
Miss Anthony. To some of the young people who are here I would like
to say that Mrs. Diaz is the woman who wrote the "Schoolmaster's Trunk."
Mrs. Gage. I now invite Mrs. Marilla M. Hills, of Dover, N. H., who is
in her eighty-second year, to say a few words. Mrs. Hills was the originator
and founder of the missionary work of the Free Baptist Church.
Mrs. Hills. I count it one of the greatest privileges my Heavenly Father
has ever given me to meet this grand Council of earnest, consecrated, cul-
tured women. I come as the humble representative of the Free Baptist
Woman's Missionary Society. As a people we are one of the smaller tribes
of God's Israel, but from the commencement of our denominational life our
sisterhood have ever been found in advanced lines of work for the elevation
of woman, and we have always had a few women as preachers among us.
As far as I have been able to ascertain, the Free Baptists were the first to
establish a Woman's Missionary Society. This was done in 1840. Previous
to our organization there had been a few local ones in one or two societies,
but no general work that extended throughout the denomination.
In 1873 we reorganized and made some change in our name and in our
method of work. Among our missionaries sent to India are five sisters, the
daughters of our pioneer missionary, Rev. J. Phillips. All these girls were
students at the college at Hinsdale, Mich. We did not know that we were so
rich in gifted and brilliant minds. To one of these, Mrs. Brewster, my
co-delegate, I feel that we owe very much. For nearly nine years she pub-
lished and edited, with rare ability, the Missionary Helper, and now is a city
missionary in Brooklyn.
The valuable papers from Denmark and Italy are given here :
DANISH WOMAN'S UNION FOR THE PROTECTION OF YOUNG GIRLS AND LONELY
WOMEN.
Mrs. Ada M.Frederiksen. A friend of Miss Barner, the founder and
President of the association, said to her, in speaking of " L'Union des
Amis des Jeunes Filles," " We ought to have such an association here," and
when she saw how deeply interested Miss Barner was, she added : "I'll
make you a present of the idea." Miss Barner took this word as a gift from
God, and went to work immediately with great energy. A board was formed
in 1880, consisting of Mrs. Julia Halkjer, General Consul and Mrs. Hansen,
Rev. C. Sorensen, and the Secretary of the Council of State, L. R. Kofoed.
The idea was to form an association of women to support the young servant
Organization. 201
girls, who, on arriving in a large town, are often led into temptation by un-
scrupulous women and men. Lodgings are offered to them, situations prom-
ised, with high salaries and very little work. The girl, while waiting for
these, runs short of money, her clothes are pawned, and she is almost helpless.
There exist in Copenhagen several other institutions, the Servant Girls'
Home, the Orphans' Home, etc. ; but, although these institutions try to fol-
low, as far as possible, the fate of the girl sent out from their schools, it is
only a small part of the servant girls who are connected with them. These
ladies meet the girls at the steamboat-landing, or the depot, and see that they
have a respectable home to go to. They would have liked to rent or build
a home ; but, not being organized, they did the best they could. In search-
ing for respectable lodgings for the girls they happened to find a home where
the house-mother, an old servant girl, who herself had had a narrow escape,
was delighted to help. When the ladies saw how sympathetic she was to the
girls, what an interest she took in the work, they persuaded her husband and
herself to move into a large house, and, the right person found, the home
was opened. She undertook the housekeeping and the immediate direc-
tion. As their means were small it had to be on a small scale. They were
at first only able to help ten, or, in an emergency, sixteen, girls. The ma-
tron and two young girls, who were trained in housekeeping, did the cook-
ing, and each visitor made her own bed and helped a little in the general
work. Any respectable woman, who needs it, can get room and board there
for a little more than twelve cents a day, and a night's lodging and breakfast
for five cents.
The girls who are educated there have to pay $2.25 a month. None but
young girls, with good recommendations from their school or their clergy-
man, are accepted as pupils. Besides this, the Home is open on Sundays and
holidays for former inmates and for girls introduced by them, or by a mem-
ber of the branch office of their town. At their evening meetings hymns
are sung, the Gospel of the day read, sometimes followed by a Bible expla-
nation. They have tea and rolls and a social talk, in which the ladies learn
a good deal of their young friends.
Let me give you a few instances of how it works. Two girls, one six-
teen years old, the other a little older, came to Copenhagen. One of
them had the address of the Home given to her on leaving her parish, but,
being too bashful to use it, she followed the other girl to a house recom-
mended by a kind gentleman on the pier. She did not like the looks of the
house and fled to the bureau, and the other girl was sent for immediately.
Another girl went straight to the Home, on finding that the people, to
whom she had engaged herself, had opened a saloon. In a third case a girl
came late to the Home. Her story sounded very odd. She had left her serv-
ice that evening on finding that her master had rented her room, and she
was expected to sleep in the family bedroom. Incredible as it seems, it was
14
202 International Council of Women.
so. In another place a very young girl was beaten, sworn at, not given suf-
ficient food. Neighbors gave her the address of the Home. Why did she
not get another place ? She was not permitted to leave, having engaged
herself for six months, not knowing of the protection given to her by law.
Fearing the fine she might incur, she did not dare to do it.
In years past, as a rule, servants were hired for a year — later for six
months — and could not leave at the expiration of that time without having
given warning when half of the term had passed. I remember I felt very
cheap the first time I — fifteen years ago — hired a girl for a month. My only
comfort was that I might keep her ever so long, in spite of this wickedness,
if I liked her. Every servant has a book, in which the time she is hired for
and her wages are stated. This book is kept by the mistress, who, on the
girl leaving, has to state how long the girl has stayed with her. In towns this
book has to be taken to the police office and stamped before the girl can get
a new place ; in the country, to the parish officers or to the pastor. Music
teachers — young girls who come to town to fit themselves for better places
by learning fine laundry work, ironing, and so forth — women who come to
town to consult doctors, or who have to send a little one to a hospital, come
and are received. Are bad women received? Not knowingly ; but they
are kindly told where to go, and taken there. Sick people, too sick to be
received, are sent to the hospital. The Home has now seventy branch
offices — a net-work over all the country. The ladies of these offices try first
to have the girls work among their own people. If the girl has made up her
mind to go, they give her the address of the Home, or of the office in the
town or district she wants to go to. The annual membership fee is small.
I hesitate to give it to you in American money. It is only a little more than
twenty-five cents. Many give more, and gifts are gratefully received.
Bakers, butchers, and brewers send gifts in natura ; newspapers and maga-
zines are coming in, too. The branch offices remit half of their income to
the headquarters and are in continual correspondence with it. Inquiries come
in about the antecedents of a girl ; a father wants to learn the whereabouts of
his daughter ; a girl wants to find a place, and so forth. For the rest, they
work independently, each branch doing the work its hand findeth to do in
its neighborhood, the headquarters setting an excellent example. Meetings
for servant girls and factory girls are held regularly. The girls bring their
knitting, sewing, mending, darning stockings. Some do it very nicely \
others have to be helped. Sewing-machines are on hand. The ladies
alternately read to them good stories, poems ; a hymn is sung. Tea is served
with plenty of rolls. As a rule, the girls are clean and neat and behave
well. The last meeting of the season is made more of a treat. These meet-
ings, in some of which instruction in the three R's is given to those who
wish it, are held in school-rooms and other public places, where light and
heat only have to be paid for. One excellent way of helping overworked
Organization. 203
teachers, sewing-girls, servants, and convalescents is to send them into the
country ; and the Home has had the pleasure of sending about two hundred
out this last year. Railroads and steamers have given part of the tickets
free, and Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess liberally gave the rest and
paid fares to the places not reached by the railroads.
The Central Home in Copenhagen has a Christmas festival that gathers all
manner of lonely women, young and old, around its tree, and entertains
about eighty guests. A good meal, some useful gifts, and often the meal for
the next day are given to them on this occasion by Her Royal Highness
Crown Princess Louise. The address of the Home is printed on a slip of
paper, and the ladies in the provinces try to have it pasted in "the book" of
every young girl who leaves their district ; and here I come to the practical
object of my report. I know there are many homes for self-supporting
women all over the United States, and I do not doubt that there are many
ladies connected with such homes in this assembly.* The association is con-
nected with two similar associations formed in Christiania and in Bergen, in
Norway ; and, furthermore, with the Union des Amis des Jeunes Filles, the
Young Women's Christian Association, the Travelers' Aid Society, and others.
A special committee is formed, the ladies of which meet the young girls
at the depot ; take them to hotels or to the Home ; see them off if they are
only passing through. I shall be glad to furnish the address of said com-
mittee to any one who would like to have it.
Miss Kirstine Frederiksen, President of the Danish Woman's
Association, sent the following paper :
THE DANISH WOMAN'S ASSOCIATION.
This organization was founded in 1871. Among its founders were Mr.
Frederik Bajer, member of the lower house of the Rigsdag, and his wife,
Mrs. Mathilde Bajer, Mrs. Rowsing, Mrs. Casse, Mrs. Christiani, Miss Caro-
line Testmann, and Mr. Klein, architect; of these Mrs. Rowsing, whose
seventieth birthday was celebrated a few years ago in quite a significant manner,
is still a member of the board of directors, while Miss Testmann is at the head
of the Business College for Women, which the association has established.
Another school, the only one of its kind, a Female Institute of Industry
and Art, in which instruction is given in drawing, painting, engraving, etc. 3
and still another, a Sunday-school for Laborers, also date their existence to
the first period of the life of the association. But otherwise everything went
on quietly, in an unassuming, retired manner, on the just conviction that
the first thing needed was education. Its practical energy the association
•Will any one of you who knows of such homes kindly give me their addresses, or send them
to my address, 357 East Ohio street, Chicago, that we could have them printed and distributed
among the girls on the steamers that leave Scandinavia ? Most of them go to friends or places,
but to many of them it would be a great help to know of a reliable home. They are met here
by the same dangers as in Europe, increased tenfold by their ignorance of the language. One
of my girls told me that the hardest moment in her life was when she, on arriving at the Chi-
cago depot, was told, " Do not trust anybody, especially not your own countrymen."
204 International Council of Women.
principally spent in remedying some of the worst evils in the way of its
progress. It supported, with money, some of our first students and other
young women who strove to work out a way for themselves.
But, in 1883, a newly-elected board of directors declared, upon entering
office, that the time had come to work in larger circles and with greater
emphasis for the ideas whi ch made up the platform of the association and
bound its members together. An active agitation was set on foot by means
of lectures deliver ed in various places of the country, pamphlets on the
" Position of Woman in Social Life," the " Legal Position of the Natural
Child and its Mother," " Woman's Right to Self-support, " Health and the
Female Dress," etc., and since January 1, 1885, an independent periodical,
Kvinden og Samfundet- — "Woman and Society."
This agitation found a peculiarly well-prepared field to operate in among
that party, half religious, half political, but wholly national, which in the
third decade of this century was formed by the poet- preacher, N. F. S.
Grundtvig, one of the master-spirits of the century, and which occupies a
prominent position in the Danish civilization of to-day. The movement
which he started was powerfully borne onward by the endeavors which in the
fifth decade became the one never-interrupted exertion of the Danish peo-
ple— to defend their boundary, to protect their language, to vindicate their
spiritual character. It immediately stirred the educated class, and soon it
penetrated even to the lowest layers of the people, awakening a new appre-
ciation of history and poesy and arousing a new craving for further develop-
ment not only of the intelligence, but of the whole moral and spiritual life.
It became the basis of a more ideal view of life which combines the common
sense and the courage of modern civilization.
Ably represented among this party by Mrs. Astrid Stampe Feddersen,
Miss Ida Falbe Hansen, and Mr. Svend Hogsbro, the Danish Woman's Asso-
ciation found many warm friends and supporters all over the country. At
the peasant's hearth Kvinden og Samfundet is read and pondered. In
the villages, when on Saturday or Sunday, people come together after the
work of the week, the cause is eagerly discussed. From the most distant cor-
ners of the country, the fifty cents which it costs to become a member, are
sent to the association "which fights for woman's rights." Nevertheless,
though during the last five years while the agitation has lasted, the member-
ship of the association has doubled eight times, it still counts only one mem-
ber for each six hundred full-grown women in the country. Nor is there
anything so very great to be said about the influence which the movement
has had on our legislation. In 1880 a bill, brought before the lower house
by Mr. Bajer and supported by a petition which was circulated by the Danish
Woman's Association and signed by 2,350 ladies, became law, and married
women thereby acquired the right to dispose of what money they might earn
after marriage, but the right to dispose of means they might be possessed of
before marriage is still denied them.
Organization. 205
Hitherto the Danish Woman's Association has considered it inexpedient
to incorporate the political vote with its platform, but it has worked steadily
and with all its might to procure the municipal vote for women, and the
present government does not seem to be antagonistic to the cause. Twice, a
bill for that purpose has been brought before the lower house and success-
fully carried, but in the upper house, composed of the largest landed propri-
etors and the heaviest tax-payers, it found only coaxing compliments and fine
phrases, but no real support. Several other reforms, for instance in the
social position of natural children, our association has striven to push partly
by discussion, partly by petitions, to the Rigsdag. What is wanted is to
procure to the natural child admission to inheritance, right to an education
proportionate to the means of the parents, and right to the name of the
father. A bill of some such contents will be laid before the Rigsdag this
session and is expected to become law.
Among the discussions raised by our association one especially attracted
wide and deep attention. In the spring of 1887 Miss Elizabeth Grundtvig,
a grand-daughter of the above-mentioned N. F. S. Grundtvig, delivered a
lecture before a lady audience on an " Equal Standard of Chastity for Men
and Women." By analysis of various examples drawn from the fiction of
the day she proved it sound and just that the moral law should be one and
the same for men and women, and she strongly insisted that such an
equality should be effected by men adopting the standard now recognized
only by women. The lecture was published, and immediately both the lec-
turer and the association were made the subject of very vehement attacks in
the press. They were not left without defense, however. First the Danish
poet, C. Hostrup, came to their aid ; then a plea was made in their behalf
from your side of the ocean, by the Norwegian preacher Kvistofer Janson ;
and finally the Norwegian poet, Bjornstjaerne Bjornson, took up their cause.
He wrote several articles for the newspapers, and, on the invitation of the
association, he came to Copenhagen and delivered a lecture November 17,
1887. He demonstrated that the full equality of standard could not but
add to the health and happiness of the race, provided it was brought about
by strengthening the demands on man and not by weakening those on
woman. Of course, as this lecture openly treated of many things which peo-
ple in general are used only to whisper about, it could not help giving offense
to many. Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of the past and his overpowering
eloquence finally carried away the audience, and the lecture was repeated
with unexampled success in twenty-three other Danish cities; afterwards also
in Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
At many points the association has been equally successful in its practical
undertakings. In 1886 was established a peculiar kind of "Intelligence
Office," in which, without paying any fee, women could obtain all needed
information concerning their legal, social, and economic relations; in 1887
206 International Council of Women.
an employment bureau for servant girls ; in 1888 a similar bureau for govern-
esses, clerks, etc., and recently have been appointed a committee to push
the introduction into the primary schools for girls of training in cooking,
washing, ironing, and other domestic work, and another to find out means
of opening the trades to women.
Mrs. Ada M. Frederiksen sent the following paper:
WOMAN'S EDUCATION IN DENMARK.
At a meeting of the leaders of the Liberal party of Denmark in 1847,
where the question of universal suffrage was discussed, it was said : "But the
men are not competent to use this right to vote; how can they be?" " Edu-
cate them," was one answer. "The right will educate them," another.
" Educate the mothers," a third. This answer was passed by as a good joke ;
the men were too busy fighting their own battles then. Still, it was not said
in vain, for a bill providing a state examination for women who desired
to be teachers in public schools, carried by Bishop Monrad, i860, was the
result of it. A special examination for women who desired to become prin-
cipals of private schools was in existence, but only a few took advantage of
it. This new examination gave to women a permanent position in the pub-
lic state schools, and entitled them to a pension after certain years of service.
Mrs. Astrid Stampe Feddersen tells us, in her little book on " Woman's
Rights," that, while the government yearly spends on the education of men
2, 100,000 crowns, it only spends 30,000 crowns on the education of women*
This means, for every crown put into the education of girls seventy are given
to that of the boys. Theoretically the difference is not quite so startling,
for we are in a state of transition ; the expenses of the university are not
taken into account, and women have (1875) Deen admitted to the University
of Copenhagen and taken degrees in every department except that of the-
ology.
As more women take advantage of this, the difference in the outlay will
not be so great. In the high schools there are already more women than
men. In the parish schools the instruction is the same for both sexes. The
sons and daughters of peasants and workingmen are instructed in Bible his-
tory, catechism, reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in towns the common
schools for boys and girls teach, besides these branches, physics', mathe-
matics, and German. Education is compulsory. A small progressive fine
has to be paid by children who are absent except in cases of sickness, when
they have to bring a doctor's certificate. As the fine is small, parents,
and sometimes employers, prefer to pay the fine for the children that work
for them. In Copenhagen a janitor is sent for children who do not come,
and if a child plays the truant against the will of the parents, it is placed in
the internate, a kind of prison in the school. There is a separate school
*A Danish crown is about twenty-eight cents.
Organization. 207
for the worst kind of children. These have to stay there nights too. The
law provides for the case of parents not being able to pay the fine; they can
be sent to prison instead, but the law is rarely, if ever, enforced, and then
only in cases of flagrant contumacy.
There is an inspector for the common schools in Copenhagen, and for
those in towns. In the country this work is done by the school committees,
of which the pastor is the president. The teachers are superintended by
the bishops on their visitation. To understand this we must remember that
the Lutheran Church is the state church of Denmark. The middle and higher
classes in the country employ private teachers, and then the pastor has to be
present at the annual examination. In the lowest and in the highest grades
of instruction the rights are equal for boys and girls, but when we come to
the Latin school — that is, the preparatory school for the university — we find
that these are only for boys. If a girl wants to go there she has to have
special instruction, or apply to the more expensive private school.
Among these schools for girls that of Miss Zahle, founded in 1851, stands
first, and has, since 1883, the right to graduate to the university. This
school is a natural development of her girls' school and high school for
girls. As it is now, with its different departments, led by almost independ-
ent principals, under the supervision of Miss Nathalie Zahle, it forms a cen-
ter of education for Danish women. In this complex of buildings are found
a national school, a school of modern languages, a normal institute, a cook-
ing school, courses of evening lectures, a preparatory school for the univer-
sity, and a gymnasium. When Miss Zahle some day retires from the work,
I hope the time will have come for the government to buy the institution and
transform it into a public Latin school for girls.
There are many other private schools for girls, some of them, as that of
the sisters Paludau-Muller, built on purpose for the work. Several private
schools for girls of the better class, where housework, laundry work, and
sewing are taught, besides literature, music, languages, are found outside the
capital, as at Vaeldegaard, Autvortskov, and other places. But some of
the best work for the education of the young peasants and peasant-girls
is done in the high schools in the country. The grand thought of Bishop
Grundtvig, to train the peasants who have no literary opportunities,
through oral lectures, was first carried out by Mr. Cold with great success,
and later by Messrs. Grove, Schroeder, La Cour, Boyesen, and others.
Opportunities for the development of women are increasing. The Danish
Women's Association has a large share in it, but we are a conservative people,
and it is so hard for parents to believe that they owe an education to their
girls as well as to their boys; but they will soon have to realize it.
208 International Council of Women.
The paper on the "Condition of Women in Italy" is from
Madam Fanny Zampini Salazaro :
WOMAN'S CONDITION IN ITALY.
Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom ; what is more is fume,
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence,
And renders us in things that most concern.
Unpracticed, unprepar'd and still to seek.— Milton.
To understand woman's position in Italy properly, American women and
all who are interested in this question must take into account the substantial
difference of social life in Europe and America. Notwithstanding the
splendor of her history, Europe is still ruled by many ancient prejudices
regarding woman, and must struggle to advance her civilization and triumph
over and destroy their consequences. Much has been done toward this end
in England, Germany, and other European states. Italy is still young, as
she only gained liberty and independence in i860, whereas in America the
desire for liberty was the motive which influenced the democracy in break-
ing loose from the mother country.
In America the prejudices and traditions of old-established systems are
absent, and to act rightly and justly you only need the means to do so.
We, in Italy, have still to fight against the established pre-eminence of men
and the bigotry of narrow-minded clericals who dread losing their power over
women; for women, when rationally educated, will begin to think for them-
selves instead of meekly submitting to their authority. The education given
in convents has done more harm to Italian women, and consequently to the
country, than even the long years of tyranny which oppressed this beautiful
land of genius and poetry. Nuns who had no experience of the realities of
life, who lived under the mystical influence of a fundamentally great, true,
and poetic religion, but who, through ignorance and desire for power, anni-
hilated much of its original grandeur and purity, who led such a secluded,
unnatural existence, could never give girls a sound, rational education such
as would fit them for their position in life. Hence, arose a miserable state
of things which, injurious to women, did not improve society and the nation
in general. But I must briefly state such facts as will give a clear idea of
the actual condition of the Italian woman both in the family and in society;
for, as yet, the Constitution allows her no public life.
Primary instruction, which was made compulsory in 1877, embraces the
first rudiments of education with needle-work, and is given in 16,816 public
girls' schools and in 6,082 mixed schools, to 856,321 girls, while boys'
schools now number 19,492 and are attended by 1,017,402 pupils. The
normal course for training female teachers for the primary schools comprises
the study of pedagogy, Italian language and literature, arithmetic, metric
system, elements of geography, history and geography of Italy, physical
Organization. 209
geography, elements of natural sciences, of domestic economy, agriculture,
the rights and duties of citizens, calligraphy, rudiments of drawing, gym-
nastics, singing, needle-work, and French. There are 83 such schools in
Italy, attended by 3,316 pupils.
In the few " magistral" schools where normal female teachers are trained,
the course is the same as the above, only more advanced. There are two
superior girls' schools, one in Rome and one in Florence, which were estab-
lished with the object of giving a still higher education by adding to the
curriculum of the " magistral " schools, English and German, logic and
psychology. One hundred and sixty-eight pupils have availed themselves of
these advantages. That in Florence is said to be better managed than the
one in Rome, which falls far short of the ideal of its foundress, Erminia Fua
Fusinato, whose early death deprived it of her fostering care and organiza-
tion. In connection with this superior school there is a society for promoting
the scientific, literary, and moral culture of women, of which our gracious
Queen is honorary president, the superindent of the school is acting president,
and the vice-president is Countess Hugo Balzani, one of the most highly
cultivated English women here. Co-operating with them is a committee of
ladies who appoint fit and proper persons to lecture to the pupils and mem-
bers of the society on various subjects, which are seldom either well chosen
or interesting.
No lady has yet spoken there, and when Countess Balzani suggested such
an innovation, several members of the committee openly expressed their
astonishment at what they evidently considered an almost scandalous depart-
ure. However, in deference to her opinion, lectures were permitted to be
delivered privately, by women, in the rooms of the superior schools, so as
not to interfere with the official biweekly professorial lectures. There are
several colleges of music, with some 300 pupils who receive a general as well
as a musical education ; also sixteen technical schools, where girls receive
practical training in needle-work of all kinds, from mending to dressmaking
and lace-work ; in artificial flower-making, and other kindred industries.
These technical schools are under the control of the Minister of Agriculture,
Industry, and Commerce, and now train about 4,046 girls. Their influence
might be much extended if, besides technical studies, something were done
to raise the thoughts and foster the higher moral qualities of the girls, who
never get a chance of hearing a lecture or of reading any good book likely
to awaken their better feelings.
Private day and boarding schools abound — 4,090 of the former and 848
of the latter, with 105,662 and 52,925 scholars, respectively. Their direc-
tion, often lamentably deficient, is chiefly in the hands of nuns ; those under
the " Filles de Charite " being the best. Since 1878 women have been
allowed to follow the courses at boy's gymnasia, " lycees " and technical
schools, as also at all the universities ; but this concession, besides giving rise
to many unkind observations about the girls who profited by it, raised a
210 International Council of Women.
question as to the practical advantages to be derived therefrom, when it was
still uncertain whether the learned professions, for which they had now quali-
fied themselves, would be thrown open to them.
Women were allowed to graduate in medicine, and we now have two lady-
practitioners. One is in Rome and has been appointed court physician by
our Queen ; but, though highly respected, I can not say that her professional
career has proved as successful as could be wished. Tacit opposition and
lack of confidence have been her chief difficulties, though her lot has been
more fortunate than that of a Turinese lady who, though qualified as a law-
yer, had to renounce her chosen profession owing to the law courts being
closed to her. Our men are not yet sufficiently free from prejudices to
openly uphold the principle of even-handed justice to both sexes, and our
women are also to blame for not using their home influence to urge men to
greater liberality of opinion.
If a woman is poor and has to support herself, she has little choice of
occupation. As a teacher, she is scantily paid and hard worked, her salary
being scarcely sufficient to provide her with food. She is often exposed to
worse miseries. If young and nice looking, her superiors, regardless of
her forlorn position, make use of it to indulge their vilest passions, and,
meeting with resistance, may dismiss her on false pretenses. Several girls
have, under these circumstances, chosen death rather than dishonor — one,
Itala , aroused universal sympathy for her, and indignation at the
conduct of her infamous seducer, who was severely punished. Such instances
are only signs of the corrupt state of things ; for few, very few, are morally
strong enough to resist the temptation of securing advancement by such foul
paths, and to struggle on in poverty and loneliness. Yet this is almost the
only opening for girls of the middle class.
According to the latest returns, there are 4,488 government teachers and
811 private ones, besides 629 female teachers in the night schools for adults,
5,957 in the adult schools open on Sundays. Normal and ''magistral"
teachers number 4,499. Government nominates 2 lady superintendents
of the state boarding-schools and 8 inspectresses. The latter have to report
on the condition of public and private schools throughout the kingdom.
The way in which these duties are often performed is neither creditable to
the government department of public instruction nor to its nominees. One
of them, however, Felicita Morandi, Inspectress at Milan, is a shining
example of a noble, highly-cultivated woman. Her influence is dreaded by
the clerical party, who do all they can to hinder her reforms and prevent
the circulation of her little book, "In Famiglia," eminently adapted for
girls' reading. Literary employment is scantily paid and precarious, unless
such success can be insured as has rewarded the Marchesa Colombi, Ida
Baccini, Matilde Serao (editress of a political paper), Grazia Pierantoni,
Mancini, and Neera ; even they could not have supported themselves entirely
by their pen.
Organization. ^211
As it is impossible to obtain any artistic training, women are excluded
from all artistic and high decorative work. To supply this want I submitted a
scheme for a girls' school of drawing and industrial art to our " Commissione
Centrale per l'lnsegnamento Artistico." It met with high approval and
praise, but neither the means nor the will to carry it out were forthcoming,
and it remains a scheme. In Turin, Milan, and Genoa, some few female art-
workers are employed in painting on china, silk, and vellum. In Venice,
the school and factory for lace, reproducing the ancient designs, has given a
certain impetus to this branch of female labor, due to Countess Adriana Zon
Marcello, lady in waiting to the Queen, who has been assisted by the local
member of Parliament, Paulo Fambri.
Among the lower classes, women share the labors of the sterner sex, except
in one or two handicrafts, where their lack of muscular strength incapaci-
tates them. As weavers, spinners, field laborers (I had almost said beasts of
burden) we find them toiling for a mere pittance ; often for twelve hours of
work their highest pay is two francs 25 centimes (45 cents), and a so-called
short day of ten hours will sometimes only yield 60 centimes (12 cents).
That there exists an earnest desire among Italian women to earn their own
livelihood is proved by there being 1,830,482 women workers, 161,202 of
whom are, alas! under fifteen years of age. Between schoolmistresses and
laborers there is an intermediate class comprising about 11,035 midwives, 23
blood-letters, 9 dentists, 487 female post-officers, and a few telephone clerks ;
quite lately a few female booking-clerks and chemists' assistants have been
appointed in rural districts.
Ladies in reduced circumstances think it no shame to beg from friends and
acquaintances. To work would be neither genteel nor honorable ! Dress-
makers, milliners, and domestic servants earn much more than teachers and
have an easier life ; but the latter are considered of higher social rank. So
the daughter of the humble worker, who might profitably follow in her
mother's footsteps, prefers to indulge her ambitious pride by entering the
"starvation army" of female teachers, where she can gain a possible maxi-
mum of about 1,000 francs, or more likely a minimum of 500 francs a year —
two francs (forty cents) per day for food, clothing, and all the necessaries of
life ! It follows as a natural consequence that marriage is held to be the best
solution of the problem, and girls use all the fascinations of youth, beauty,
dress, and coquetry to catch a husband rather than be compelled to face
single life. Such unions seldom realize the high ideal of marriage, with its
home influences training the inmates of the household to be true men and
women, fit to wage the battle of life with honor and single-mindedness in
that state to which God may call them.
Having thus sketched the social standing of Italian women, I must dwell
for a few minutes on their position in the eye of the law when married.
Under the civil code woman has no existence apart from her husband. He
212 International Council of Women.
is her lord and master in all things, and, as she is supposed to owe all to him,
he has the complete control of even her private fortune, should she have any.
Bear in mind the fact that love matches are rare, and expediency the usual
motive for entering the married state. The consequences are often life-long
misery and unhappiness — the wife striving to keep up appearances, yet going
her own way, the husband equally independent but less careful of his con-
duct, for should he be unfaithful his punishment is light, whereas the wife's
desertion of the paths of honor can be visited, should her husband choose
to expose her guilt, with all the terrors of the law. In other lands the usual
resource in such cases would be a divorce, which, however, does not yet
exist with us (although warmly advocated by our past and present ministers
of justice, Tommaso Villa and Guiseppe Zanardelli and other influential
politicians), the only approach to it being a " legal separation."
The grounds on which even this is granted tend to shackle the woman.
Should she apply for it she must prove ill-treatment on her husband's part,
or open cohabitation with another woman. If her suit is granted, the man
must restore to her hands the control over any private fortune which she had
previous to her marriage. Should there be no such means of subsistence he
is bound to give her an allowance proportionate to his income ; the children
of their union, if there be any, are still under their mutual control; she
must bear his name and remain his wife. On the other hand, should the
appeal for separation be mutual, or proceed from the man, no restitution of
her dower is enforced, and her husband is only bound to contribute suffi-
cient for her bare support. Many women, rather than expose themselves to
the obloquy following such a step, close their eyes and live their lives
apart from, yet under the roof of, the man whom they promised to love,
honor, and obey, unable to taste the sweets of that promise and bound to
the harsh obedience. Is it likely that the offspring of such unhappy unions
can be trained in purity and reverence for the ties of a home life which they
never knew? Under the "penal code," if a woman be guilty of crime her
husband may, should he so please, take the law into his own hands and mur-
der her or have her imprisoned for any period not exceeding two years ; but
she has no such revenge granted her, "legal separation" is again the only
resource, fraught as ever with social ostracism to the woman and comparative
impunity to man.
Over that darkest social question of legal prostitution I would willingly
draw a veil, but I can not give an adequate view of woman's condition with-
out alluding to this plague spot. The wretched women included in the
term prostitutes, are divided into two classes — the free and the licensed.
The former ply their degrading calling on their own terms ; the latter are
obliged to receive the first comer at a fixed price, on which the government
levies a tax established by law. They are compelled meekly to submit to a
medical examination, and, if necessary, are sent into a hospital, where they
Organization. 213
are compelled to live with others of their class, and where, alas ! they can
meet with no ladies, as in America and England, to offer them a word of
sympathy or comfort and try to reclaim them from their sinful life. Oh,
that we had now in Italy a woman with the genius of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
to describe vividly the horrors of this slavery of women. Then, perhaps, the
hearts of our statesmen might be touched, and the shameful laws for legal-
izing prostitution be blotted from the statute-book of a free and civilized
people. The powers of the police are excessive, and open the door to tyr-
annous abuses. We have now in Italy 1,119 houses of ill-fame, with 6,643
inmates, besides 3,779 private lodgings. In one year the police inscribed
in their infamous registers 3,850 unfortunate women, in addition to 3,779
who ply their trade privately. Of the former, 1,206 were minors. The
government receives from the tax on prostitution 603,005 francs per annum,
while the cost of the police and the hospitals for the state regulations of pros-
titution is about 1,275,000 francs a year.
But I am happy to hear that the Professors Albaneseand Tommasi Crudeli
have been charged by our present President of the Council of Ministers,
Signor Crispi, with the task of drawing up new rules for the sanitary law
proposed by the late lamented Bertani, who declared in Parliament that he
wished to abolish all this shame. Let us sincerely hope that the new law
will be approved and an end put to this miserable state of things, and that
a new era of liberty and morality may arise in favor of so many unfortunate,
sinful women who, if charitably helped in the path of reform, may be led to
abandon their vicious course and lead a virtuous and honest life.
I have now, I think, given a fair, general idea of the difficulties Italian
women have to contend against when struggling to prove themselves fit to be
men's equals in the ordinary avocations of life. And, in conclusion, I must
briefly allude to some of the large-minded men whose labors have been
devoted to the removal of the existing inequalities of legislation. Mancini,
the two De Forestas, Morelli, Bonghi, Bertani, De Sanctis, Coppino,
Grimaldi, Depretis, Gabba, Lussana, and Moleschott have all in their day
brought powerful influence and deep thought to our assistance, and it is to
them that we owe the small advantages we are now at last enjoying. The
work of most of them, however, lay principally in the halls of the Houses
of Parliament. The outer public knew and cared little for a subject which
they neither understood nor feared, and it was reserved for a promising young
jurist, Count Massimo Collalto, to bring the question of women's rights
before a mixed audience in Rome on February 7, 1886. His arguments,
though bold and new to many of his hearers, met with the approval of the
public press and of the more enlightened portion of Roman society.
One of the great hindrances to the spread of healthier ideas on the sub-
ject has been the absence of any journal for women's special reading, from
whose pages they could learn what their sisters were doing in foreign lands.
214 International Council of Women.
Two attempts were made to supply this want in the issue of La Donna
by Madame G. A. Baccari, at Bologna, and La Cornelia published at
Florence, by Aurelia Folliero de Luna. Both were short-lived ; the former
owing to its open hostility to religion and advocacy of free thinking, and
the latter to its extreme views on the whole question of woman's rights.
One great defect was common to both, they pre-supposed an enlightened
band of readers, fully alive to their own unsatisfactory condition of educa-
tion and culture; they did not seek to point out a remedy, so, naturally, they
effected little towards the realization of their object. Sanguine of a happier
result, I published in January, 1887, the first number of the Rassegna
degli Lnteressi Fentminili, a copy of which has been already submitted to
your International Council of Women. In its monthly issues I have striven
to show, not only where the hardships of our condition lie, but to suggest
alleviations, to interest my countrywomen in general topics, and bring them
into contact with workers and thinkers in other parts of the world.
My efforts have met with moderate success, and the extended circulation of
my magazine, now in the hands of one of our influential publishers, has
aroused the bitter ire of the ultra-clerical party. At first, private observa-
tions reached my ears — those I could ignore, but when an open attack is
made on my work in the chief organ of the Vatican, I can no longer keep
silence, and must in the April number refute the assertion, that the patron-
age and encouragement always extended to me by our gracious Queen is
purely a child of my imagination, by publishing an answer which will appear
with the Queen's openly declared approval.
The papacy is in the throes of a bitter struggle for the recovery of tem-
poral power, forever lost to it in 1870. Its influence over men is fast waning,
but, by means of the confessional and the pulpit, its ministers have hitherto
kept a firm hold on the women of their congregations, whose ignorance and
superstition they foster. Now that a more successful attempt is being made
to shake this power by extended education, all the weapons of personal bit-
terness and calumny are pressed into service by the large section of narrow-
minded clericals. Its nobler intellects stand aside powerless to check the
stream, yet grieved at a spirit which can not separate the true interests of
religion from political questions. However, I hope that with time and per.
severing struggles we may obtain all the reasonable reforms in favor of the
Italian woman, who has a right to reach the high intellectual and moral level
which her sisters have reached in other nations. For much of the matter
of this sketch I must acknowledge my obligations to my zealous and constant
collaborateur, Count Massimo Collalto.
Now I send, in the name of all Italian women, a sincere and warm greet-
ing to the ladies assembled in the International Council of Women, in
whose deliberations I am sorry not to have been able to join personally.
Organization. 215
Mrs. Gage. I now present to you Mrs. M. Louise Thomas, of New York,
President of Sorosis.
Mrs. Thomas. Gentlemen and ladies : I am asked to speak to you on the
subject of organization as applied to women's clubs. While we claim that
Sorosis, the women's club of New York, is in a sense the oldest in the
world, doubtless the idea existed long before. There were meetings of
women many years before Sorosis was dreamed of. We had the Blue Stock-
ing Club of Great Britain, and of those nearer at hand, in 1842, Margaret
Fuller, who resided at that time in New York, and was on the editorial staff
of the Tribune, gathered around her a group of women to listen to her
remarkable conversations ; however, there was no permanent organization
among them, and they fell apart when Margaret left New York. I had
the pleasure of forming a club in Bridgeport, Conn., in 1863, which we
called "Evenings Together." In all of these clubs, however, gentlemen
were admitted as participants.
Sorosis was organized just twenty years ago ; close to her came the New
England Woman's Club, then many others sprung up over the country and
they still are growing faster and faster. Sorosis is strictly a woman's club ;
that is, men are not admitted to any of its regular meetings, either social
or business. It is not recognized in any by-law, but there is one day of the
year that is Gentlemen's Day, when we invite them to dine with us, but
upon no other occasion can any gentlemen be admitted to the meetings.
I am not presenting these facts as being the best methods, but merely as
facts. It is composed of literary and representative women, who meet for
the interchange of thought ; to be a help to each other, and to have a good
time. We are working women in the best sense.
The word Sorosis is purely Greek and signifies " an aggregation." The
strictest translation would be a "cumulous." For example, this body
before you is Sorosis in the strict sense of the word. It is an aggregation
of thought and of interests and for different purposes. Botanically, we say
it represents many fruits in one, as the breadfruit or the pineapple. Sorosis >"
is not — I owe it to my constituents to say this — it is not a woman's suffrage .
association ; it is rather conservative. There are three subjects that are
never talked upon in the club — religion, politics, and woman's suffrage;
not that there are not any women in the club who are deeply interested in
all these questions, but because it is feared they might cause dissension.
That many women in the club do feel a great sympathy in woman's suffrage
is evident from the fact that three of its original incorporators are now
present with us, with thirty-two of the members. Sorosis is alive to the
influence of the advanced thought of the age ; it realizes, too, the changes
that have come within twenty years ; that the thought which in the beginning
was a huge joke, that women should feel themselves competent to draw apart
and sit with each other for mutual sympathy and the expression of their
216 International Council of Women.
thoughts and feelings, is now not merely tolerated in the community, but has
won recognition and respect.
I am sure you have been impressed, as I have been, with the different sub-
jects presented, the experiences given to us, and I think every man and
woman must have felt in listening to these reports a degree of concern that
these noble women should have been giving their best work and that in every
report there seems to be some lost chord. There always seems to be a point
to my mind where there is a waste of power, and I ask myself, Why is it that
women who see so clearly the needs of the race ; why is it that all this
enthusiasm and earnestness should not meet recognition ? In the mining
centers of our country in Pennsylvania, locomotives of unusual size and
power are used to draw the heavy loads of coal over the steep mountain
grades. I have seen one of these huge engines, weighing from 50 to 60 tons,
standing cold and still upon the track ; I have seen it moved by a single
hand, holding a small bar of iron applied as a lever under one of the wheels,
a movement which, if continued, and which, if assisted by the breathing
steam and guided by the. intelligent hand of the engineer, would speedily
carry its precious weight of freight out into the world for the comfort of the
people.
Gentlemen and ladies, do we not all see the engine standing upon the
track? Do not we all wonder why the lever is held from the hand of woman ?
Why the country and the world are still waiting? What is it that has brought
these women out this week to tell us of their marvelous works ? I have a
list here of some of the purposes of which these women have come to tell us.
First we have religion. We have those who were a few years ago the closest
kind of sectarians bringing to us the needs of the people from a religious
point of view. We have education, we have young women telling us the
trouble they had to enter colleges, and their striving now to make the best
of their opportunities, and we have philanthropies in all their phases ; we
have temperance, we have the industries, we have the professions, we have
organizations and the power they give ; we have the legal, the social, and
political conditions. All these are laid before you by single voices, and yet
each woman here represents a constituency ranging from half a million
down to a few hundred or less. Now, friends, these works are all stand-
ing-^they are waiting for the little lever that starts the big engine.
I hold in my hand a letter written by the Crown Princess of Denmark.
It is written from the palace in her own hand and bears the royal signet
and is addressed to Mrs. Cramer, sister of General Grant.
Amalieborg Palace, January 23, 1888.
There is one thing to which I should so much like to draw your attention , though
I have not the slighest idea if you yourself, or through your friends, might help a
little. The subject will have your approbation I know, and, perhaps, if there was
a chance, you would not mind some possible trouble, having kept such a faithful
remembrance of your stay and friends in Denmark.
Organization, 217
You know, I am sure, that there is to be a Congress at "Washington (I believe in
March) for women and their interests. There will be a delegate there, Mrs. Fred-
eriksen, a Danish lady, who resides in Chicago. She is going to represent the Chris-
tian Defense Society, the same as " Young Women's Christian Association," or the
friend of young girls and the traveler's aid, with which associations it is correspond-
ing, and, more or less, a branch of them — quite by itself, not under them. . I have
heard that in Sweden and Norway they are thinking of trying to get a home, a kind
of home-mission house for girls or women. I think this idea good, and I know it is
desired very much, so beg to get one for Danish ones, too, either in connection
with the others, only that there should be a section or a hall or beds especially for
them, if possible, which, perhaps, might prove to be cheaper than erecting one for
Danes alone. But if it can not be sure otherwise than alone, there might be but a.
few rooms, with a kitchen and a Danish lady or woman at the head of it. In all
this, Mrs. Frederiksen should try to awaken an interest.
,« From here we can not say how or if. That some one can do who is more initiated
into American life and customs. All I should like to ask now is, that you kindly
would help or counsel and interest others. Perhaps you had settled to be present
or that you know some friends going to partake in it. I am afraid that I ask very
much, too much of you. Then, pardon me, dear Mrs. Cramer, for old friendship's
sake. (Signed) Louise.
Mrs. Gage. May I introduce to you Mrs. Jennie C. Croly, better known
as "Jennie June," who for twenty-seven years was the editor of Madame
Demoresf s Monthly?
women's clubs.
Mrs. Croly. The club idea was an advance upon the women's societies
which had preceded it and which were usually devoted to some single ob-
ject, and attracted those who sympathized with it. The "club" had no
such basis of union. It brought together women of many minds, of differ-
ent degrees, and every shade of opinion. Women, having less experience
than men, are usually more environed by prejudices, and it became part of
the education of the club to take these down from their position as virtues.
The club was necessarily many sided, and inspired work which of itself it
could not accomplish without a single devotion which would have destroyed
its character.
Sorosis, the first woman's club, had no precedents ; but it naturally grew
into a many-sided and representative organization. When it was formed
there were no State Aid Societies, or Industrial Unions, or working-girl's
guilds. It made the first searching investigations into the conditions of
foundlings and foundling hospitals, and published such full and complete
reports as inspired the establishment of two foundling hospitals in the city of
New York ; it organized the first committee of inquiry into the condition of
shop-girls in New York, the exactions of employers, and the means afforded
for needed rest ; it published reports and gave names of those who were
humane ; it made the first report and drew up the first memorial presented,
in 1876, to the University of the city of New York, and to the President and
15
218 International Council of Women.
Trustees of Columbia College, asking that" their doors should be opened to
women, and stating what had been done by the universities in England, and.
elsewhere. The minor details of a very diversified work it is not necessary
to recapitulate, but it ought to be remembered that the " A. A. W.," known,
variously, as the "Woman's Congress," and the "Association for the
Advancement of Women," owes its origin entirely to Sorosis.
The club idea seems to me to be not generally understood or its scope
sufficiently considered in the organization of women. It has been said that
the efforts of women are largely echoes of the activities of men. This is
certainly not true of women's clubs. The Woman's club came together,
was founded, officered, supported, maintained from the beginning till now,
solely by women. No men entered into its acts or its consequences, except
so far as it has influenced their own acts in their own clubs. The club-life
of women has been distinctive; it has been, I think, quite unique in its way.
When Sorosis was first formed in New York it was asked, What would be
the object? Unless it was a sewing society or a missionary society, no one
supposed that it could have an object. When women came together as a
club, they at once began to consider their own needs. They began to con-
sider what they most required, and they found that they required an education
in methods, in the way to govern meetings, in the way of conducting socie-
ties. They found that they wanted to learn, most of all, what women them-
selves were doing, what the women of the world were engaged in, what they
were thinking about, and that was the basis upon which Sorosis was formed.
It was formed as a representative club of the ideas and interests of women.
The only two clubs with which I am very familiar are those of New York
and Philadelphia. A very interesting organization has grown out of the
Philadelphia Club. This is the Working Women's Guild, which is now under
the auspices of the New Century Women's Club. The Guild has a member-
ship of upward of 700 working girls. No one can be a member unless she
works in a shop or factory, or in some way earns her own living by some
form of manual labor. They have classes, and the club-house represents as
many as nine or ten, some six or seven of which are in session every evening.
Although the cooking class and the two sewing classes of dressmaking and
fancy needle-work are popular, and the gymnasium is always filled, the most
popular classes and the ones that brought the largest constituency are the
literature and languages, and what is known as the thinking class. This
thinking class is, I believe, unique in the history of women's clubs. They
discuss philosophy ; they discuss all those subjects which we have been accus-
tomed to consider abstruse ; and the insight, the intellectual strength which
those girls display, would astonish many who consider themselves far in ad-
vance of them in culture and education.
The following interesting letter and sketch have been
received from Germany. Such cordial responses encourage
Organization. 219
us to believe that our efforts at international association of
women are not premature :
To the International Council of Women :
In reply to your kind invitation to attend the Fortieth Anniversary of the Woman
Suffrage Movement, we can only regretfully decline, as we have already done in the
columns of the organ of our association, New Paths, a copy of which has been sent
you.
The season of the year, as well as the condition of our society, prevent us sending
a delegate, but we will, nevertheless, be with you in thought and sympathy.
As every advance made in the service of humanity results in the gain of the entire
race, so an effort in any land to elevate woman to a more worthy position, uplifts
women everywhere. But it is well to show that in every country there are women
who are ready to take part in such movements, and to strive, side by side with the
women of other nations, toward the same high goal. Therefore, our union sends
you a sisterly greeting, and begs you to extend it to all the members in your Council.
To this we add a brief sketch of the movement begun in Germany forty years ago,
and also of the work of our association, which is now in its twenty-third year.
We will be very glad to receive any reports of the proceedings, which you will
kindly forward to us for use in our journal. We send best wishes for the success of
your very important meeting.
On behalf of the management of the Allgemeiue Deutsche Frauen-Vereins :
Louise Otto Peters. Aloise Wintor.
Auguste Schmidt. Henriette Goldschmidt.
J. Freiderici.
Leipzig, March, 1888.
THE WOMAN MOVEMENT IN GERMANY r848-l888.
The beginning of the woman movement in Germany may, like that of our
American sisters, be referred to the year 1848. At that time a great revolu-
tion went all over the world, which did not leave the German women un-
moved. They were swept with the tide, and, in addition to their usual work
of benevolence, determined to show the world their own true worth and con-
vince men of their rightful importance and position. Forming unions, they
began to take charge of kindergartens, and even of a high school in Ham-
burg. Men joined them in this educational movement and helped to make
it a success. In Saxony Louise Otto published and edited for four years
a. journal which gave all the news concerning woman's rights.
In 1865 was held in Leipzig a convention, the object of which was not
charity, but the intellectual elevation of woman. In the same year the Uni-
versal German Women's Union founded, under the management of Auguste
Schmidt, a home and school for poor girls and orphans in which they were
taught to make their own living. From the date of its organization until
1872 the Union published a small paper reporting its work. Since that our
organization, as well as the woman movement in general, has made slow but
sure progress against great opposition. The journal issued by our Union,
New Ways, edited by Louise Otto and Auguste Schmidt (Leipzig), has for
220 International Council of Women.
its object the advancement of women in all lines of progress, but in Ger-
many we have to work with great tact, and by conservative methods; many
copies of our journal, especially those numbers treating of woman's rights,
have been distributed all over North and South Germany.
At the time of the organization of our National Union, local unions were
formed in many cities and smaller towns. Their special work is the build-
ing and management of schools for poor girls, in which not only the ordi-
nary studies of grammar schools are taught, but cooking, sewing, etc.
They urge girls to realize in their lives the motto, "■ Work is an honor to
women." Almost simultaneously with the formation of our association was-
that of the Loette Union (with which we are on the most friendly terms),,
which originated and manages the industrial schools to be found all over
Berlin. * * *
For years our association has been preparing a book upon the legal rela-
tions of men and women. We have sent to the Reichstag one petition on
the subject, but it was not acted upon. We have made several efforts to have
women admitted to the universities. We have had, since 1879, a "Mutual
Relief Fund; " the interest of this capital is now used to send girls to the
Swiss schools and universities, but as soon as it is allowed it will be enlarged
to found a German university for women equal to the best now existing for
men. The difference between our position and that of our American sisters
is largely due to the fact that you live in a republic, we in a monarchy — you
in a young country where everything is new, we in a land centuries old,,
where the ideas and habits of thought are, so to speak, incrusted in the
people.
Mrs. Gage. You will now hear from Mrs. May Wright Sewall, of Indian-
apolis.
Mrs. Sewall. So many points have been already touched on the circum-
ference of this enlarging sphere of woman that it seems almost impossible to
find two more to which it will be profitable to call your attention, in con-
nection especially with organization as a feature of modern life.
Organization grows out of the principle of division of labor, and also is
the result of the expression of the many-sidedness of human nature. This
many-sidedness has long been known to be an attribute of man. Men were
organized in this country years ago to represent its material interest. In
my own rather centrally situated city scarcely can I pick up a morning
paper without seeing an announcement of some association of men that will
convene that day in Indianapolis, or the next week, or the next month.
The wool-growers, or the horse-breeders, or the poultrymen's protective
association will convene, and so on through all the forms of labor that
engross men's thoughts. Be they small or large, or apparently of little
moment, they are associated together for the protection of their own inter-
ests. In the beginning of these organizations it was not so much a union
Organization. 221
of those whose interests were one because of the sympathy which bound
them together, as it was of those whose interests were one, to separate from
those who were opposed to them.
But the women have organized themselves less for material results and
more for the objects affecting the spiritual interests of humanity. We have
found them organized for the promotion of literature, for the study of his-
tory, political science, art, philanthropy, and the charities ; in all these mani-
fold ways for the enlargement of their own interests and for the protection
of the spiritual interests of humanity. Undoubtedly there was in that which
led them to combine something of the same feeling which originally ani-
mated combinations of men who were organized for the promotion of mate-
rial interests ; something of the feelings that they were separated from the
rest of human kind, and that the hands of other women were against them.
Certainly that was true when women were first organized to secure for them-
selves the political rights that belong to citizen£%f this Republic ; and so in
the beginning women were classed by the organizations with which they stood,
and many a time have I heard the question asked of a woman when she was
introduced to another, " Is she suffrage ? Is she temperance ? " In our city
of Indianapolis it is not an infrequent question, when a lady is introduced
to another, to have her ask : " Are you art ? Are you literature ? Are you
history? Are you orphan asylum?" and so on, to see if they can find out
where they belong together, where they touch in their interests. But now
we are having in these later days the happy illustration of the truth so charm-
ingly set forth in that wonderful little volume of Edward Everett Hale—
" Ten Times One Are Ten." I supposed men always knew, even in those
remote days, when their mathematics stopped at the rule of three, that ten
times one are ten. But only in recent days have we grasped the idea that
in the realm of spiritual mathematics ten times one are more surely ten than
in the material world. In the material world there may come abatements
of value, the value of to-day may be discounted to-morrow, or it may be
above par ; but in the spiritual world every time the multiplication is made
the product is surely ten times one are ten, and ten times ten are one hun-
dred, and ten times one hundred are one thousand, and ten times one hun-
dred thousand are one million. Is this a weary sum to you ? To me it is
an illuminating one. Going over all the multiplications of this little volume,
we have certainly found that ten times one hundred thousand are a million
•every time ; and in the various interests represented here there are more
than a million of women who represent these organized movements.
Now, coming to this point of many-sidedness, originally we expected to
find the suffrage adherents in one tent, the temperance under another, liter-
ature under another, and those who were the dispensers of charities each
tinder their own tents. But in time there were frequent communications,
passing from tent to tent, all the occupants of these several tents beginning
222 International Council of Women.
to feel themselves within one camp. Here is the application of our prin-
ciple : The club existed, perhaps, at first because of a single interest in which
many were absorbed. Then the suffrage women became absorbed in tem-
perance, and the temperance women became absorbed in suffrage, and those
who were interested in art were becoming interested in the charities, and the
women who were at first interested in charities were found also interested in
art, and charities and art became mutually interested. So one woman can
no longer be asked, Are you suffrage, or are you temperance, orpare you
identified with any one thing? because she is becoming interested in all. I
hope the time will soon come when we can all reply — in regard to those of
whom we have questioned, Is she a suffrage, is she this, or is she that? — that
she is a woman, and having all these interests represented in one, feeling the
recognition of the community of interests binding them all together, a com-
munity of women, bound to neither one thing nor another, but all daugh-
ters of the living God.
Mrs. Gage. You will now hear from a lady who can surely tell you all
there is to tell of organization, Miss Frances E. Willard.
Miss Willard [holding up .her hand with outspread fingers]. You see
that ? Just look at that. It doesn't amount to much. But look at that
[holding up a clinched fist] ; that is the difference between isolated, segre-
gated, passive womanhood, and organized, vigorous, harmonious womanhood.
All the muscles, all the fingers in that little ball doubled up like that, and
what a whacking blow they deal against all wrongs ! I am afraid Amanda
Deyo will think I am a little warlike, but I believe she and I only wish to
lift this war and carnage up to victory. We only wish to turn all the
bullets into printer's type ; we only wish the war to be a war of
words, for words are wings j they are full of lightning. Every brain the
open furrow, every word the seed cast in, and you have humanity brought to
a different plane ; but you can't do it alone; you can't do it unless you
come along together ; it is easier to climb up together. As the little girl
climbing up a slippery hill on a wintry day, reaching up her paddies to her
taller sister, said, " Oh, it is easier taking hold of hands." Somebody who
has studied these things a great deal said to me : " You can tell a harmo-
nious and organizing nature, because the involuntary position of the hands-
will be like that" [folded together]. Now, I notice Mary Eastman stood
that way. I notice that women, except when they are on their society style
and manner, stand that way. I believe the bringing of one hand up to the
other so that they can grasp something is the mighty symbol of this
Woman's Council. To me it is the grandest thought that ever flew out
of a woman's brain and caught enthusiasm out of a woman's heart.
See a little, lonesome, stray snowflake come down through the air ;.
it falls and melts and is no more. Now see others come along talking in that
noiseless, gossiping way together, and as it comes down more and more it
Organization. 223
has evidently got something on its mind, and after awhile it is joined by
others, and, if it organizes its attack, it will make a drift thirty feet high
that will stop that fifty-ton engine of Mrs. Thomas and send it back crouch-
ing on its haunches, and it can't do a thing. And if into that great snow-
storm you get a breeze, then it will whirl it all away in a second like the
blizzard you had.
Now, women are the snowflakes. And the organized attack is against this
old, hoary-headed, materialistic, conservative way of doing things. And
the mighty breeze that shall set them flying is the mighty sisterhood, and it
will bring in all that is good, and true, and pure. It has been the curse of
humanity in the past that half the wisdom, more than half the ability,
more than half the gentleness did not find any organic expression. Now it
is getting expression, and we are here not only to see it and sit about and
twirl our thumbs and watch it coming, but we are here to just put in our
mighty force to make it come. Each woman that has just sat here and lent
a kind attention has helped it. Each one who has gone away and spoken a
kind word has helped it. Each one that has lifted an aspiration toward
the great heart that holds the world has helped it.
The great power of organization for women is, that it brings them out ; it
translates them from the passive into the active voice ; the dear, modest, cling-
ing things didn't think they could do anything, and, lo and behold ! they
found out they could. They come to you with a quiver of the lip, and look
at you so hopeful and expectant, and wonder if they could do something ;
and a year or two after, you hear them with deep voice and perfect equipose
telling their dearest thought to a great audience, or you see them in the
silent charities, carrying out their noble thought toward humanity. You
know what mighty power there is in the snow. Then you go through this
chemical process of the organizing power, and how easy and simply you can
learn to do it by seeing others do it. It is like the taking of a photograph —
first, the negative, which you don't know anything about ; then it is exposed
to the sun and colored, and brought out in full perspective. It took a good
many years to bring the women of this country out into a perspective of an
International Council.
They were not great enough at first, they were not large enough. Boston
gave us the rationale of all this in those tender words of Julia Ward Howe,
in that grandiose but perfectly clear philosophy of Mary Eastman, and in
the sharp, clear-cut utterances of Abby Morton Diaz we have had it all set
before us in its emphasis this morning. Now shall we set to work and make
it true ? Shall we merge our differences, accommodate each to the other for
this great and beautiful mosaic of the International Council and the National
Council ? I believe we shall. A National society — and of course I think
right straight away of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, that I
know so well — is a great pineapple, with lots of locals and auxiliaries,
224 International Council of Women.
like bunches out all over the pineapple ; that makes the National Society.
Then we have got a great, splendid basket, and we are going to put all those
pineapples into the basket, and that basket is the International Council.
Let us each and all say that we will help lift it up and put it in the great
pantheon where all the fruits of civilization, where all the beauties of its
grand aggregate should go. * * *
Remembering what Mrs. Croly told us, there is a club that I would like
to tell you more about — a guild of college girls, the Alphi Phi, that is now
•established in some of our leading colleges. In Syracuse, connected with the
university, they have built themselves a club-house ; they have a matronly
lady to be their mother, and they get their board and all the sense of com-
fort dear to a woman, and I warrant you there is no tobacco smoked in that
-club. I wish young ladies from other schools would go and do likewise ; it
is a grand thing to do — to study every way we can how we can combine to
lift each other up, and never let any one down. To my mind, organization
is the one great thought of creation; it is the difference between chaos and
order; it is the constant occupation of God, and, next to God, the greatest
organizer on this earth is the mother.
Woman is a great diplomatist; in the democracy of home woman is a
harmonizer, who, when things get mixed, talks to everybody and tells
them to make up; she sets her home in order and fits this to that, and sees
that it has a unity and entirety; and man — he didn't mean any harm, but
he wasn't any such harmonizer as woman, and down here on the plane of
force he said he would go and get up that wonderful club of government, and
he has made it only half a club because, in the nature of things, he couldn't
do it any other way. But when woman comes to stand beside him in law,
then we shall learn what society might be, what goes to make a world. We
have only had guessings and etchings and monochromatics yet; wait till you
see the chromo and the full and beautiful oil painting. It never will come
till you get woman's eye and man's eye brought to bear together. You will
never get the grand perspective, the telescopic view, until you get their eyes
side by side. We want to make of humanity's heart that dual heart that
shall beat as one. We want to make it the sun-glass that brings all the di-
vergent rays of power to one focus, and through organization we will set our
glass so as to bring the rays of power into convergence, and make them burn
and blaze on every wrong until all error shall be swept away and the blessed
sunshine of truth stream upon us, and we shall say: " Lo and behold!
humanity is as God said it should be : made in His own image, male and
female, with dominion over all the earth."
Miss Anthony. After telling you that everybody else must send their
notices to the Tribune, and not bother this Council with them, I am going
to give you one from the White House, signed by Secretary Lamont. He
says: " I am directed to say, in reply to your note of inquiry, that the Presi-
Organization. 225
dent and Mrs. Cleveland will receive the women of the International Council
on Friday, to-morrow afternoon, at half-past three o'clock."
With regard to organization, if Miss Foster were here she would second
me in saying that the greatest hindrance in the way of securing a represen-
tative demonstration of all the lines of work in which women are occu-
pied has come from the fact that they are not organized. We will take,
for instance, the Women's Clubs. They are all over this nation. In New
Orleans there is a. splendid club, in Kansas there is one containing 600 of
the best cultured women of that State. When it was decided to invite
Sorosis, we thought it was the oldest club, but the New England Club
vies with Sorosis in having been organized a little earlier ; but no matter
who was first, somebody must be first, and I have noticed that when any
movement comes into the world it springs up in a dozen places at the same
time. This is remarkable, but it is true. History shows that every woman
who has written of her society, or herself, has always said it was the first
time it was ever done by any woman. And the reason they feel in this way
is because there has been no association ; each woman has stood alone
in the world, and so has thought herself first in everything.
Mrs. Gage then adjourned the Convention.
THUKSDAY, MARCH 29, 1888.
EVENING SESSION.
LEGAL CONDITIONS.
Miss Anthony presiding. Music by the orchestra. Invoca-
tion, Mrs. Susan H. Barney.
The Chairman. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs. Dever-
eux Blake, President of the New York State Suffrage Association.
LEGAL DISABILITIES.
Mrs. Blake. A general impression prevails, especially among foreigners,
that in this country the legal disabilities of women have been largely
removed. But this is very far from being the case. Even in Massachusetts,
usually considered so progressive, only recently, and after a long fight, has
the right been secured to a widow to be buried beside her husband in the
family lot j and, despite all the prating about the home as woman's appro-
priate place, in a large part of our country a married woman has no legal
home. After her husband's death " the widow may remain forty days in her
husband's residence," so runs the law in more than half our States. In some
of the Western States a modification of this provision has taken place.
Under the " Homestead Act'' the home always belongs to the mother. A
married man in those States can not own the home in which he lives ; mar-
riage makes it his wife's.
The English common law, with all the cruel provisions which grew up in
the darkness of the Middle Ages, was the basis of American jurisprudence.
But many of the oppressive provisions of the English common law have been
modified, in most of the States, so far as to secure to a married woman the right
to her property and separate earnings. But the iron rule of the English law
still controls in some of the Northern and several of the Southern States ;
and under its provisions the wife is literally merged in the husband — she has
no separate existence, and marriage is civil death. Blackstone says that
" woman is a perpetual minor; " that "the husband and wife are one, and
that one the husband," and this is literally true. A married woman can not
sign a contract, can not rent a house ; absolutely, she has no civil existence.
If she goes into business, every dollar that she makes belongs to her husband.
If she works outside of the house and draws a salary for her services, all that
she earns is his. If she is injured by an accident, her husband sues the re-
sponsible person for the loss of his wife's services. In the language of Pe-
truchio, he may truly say :
" She is my goods, m5r chattel ; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything."
Legal Conditions. 227
Her legal position is accurately described by the words. She is nothing
but an adjunct of her husband in life, his relict after death. Recently, at a
public dinner, the list of guests was published, with this statement appended:
" Those having stars attached to their names were accompanied by ladies ; "
the women were of so little consequence they were not worth mentioning.
Small wonder that this should be the estimate in which they are held, after
centuries of common law rule.
But the most cruel of all the provisions of this code is that which gives
the children to the father, and, strange as it may seem, while in so large a
portion of our States the law has been so modified as to give a woman the
control of her own property and her own earnings, there are only three
States in the Union — Kansas, New Jersey, and Iowa — where a woman has
any claim to her own children. In all the other States the husband has the
absolute right to bind out the children or to give them away, or by will to
appoint a guardian for them after his death ; the mother has no legal rights
whatsoever to control the destinies of the children for whom she has risked
death.
There is a positive premium on dishonor in these States ; the poor girl
whose child is born out of wedlock owns it, the burden and the shame are
hers ; the honorable wife has no right to her child for a single instant of
its existence ; even when it is under her heart it is not hers. Can human
slavery go deeper ? Of course this law is of small concern in really happy
homes, and we have so many of these that we sometimes forget the others.
But where the couple are inharmonious, where the husband is tyrannical or
unkind, this enactment is a fruitful source of misery to women. I am
ashamed to say that, with all our boasted advances in New York, we have
this law in full force, and with especial severity of provisions. A man
may will away his child though he die before it be born, and strangers
can take it from its mother's arms so soon as it has a separate existence.
Ah, you may say, such cruel provisions are never enforced, but they are.
A poor young German some years ago married an industrious American
girl, who supported him until he died. He was under age, but wished to
make a will, and to humor a dying man's caprice she paid a lawyer for draw-
ing the instrument. Some months after the boy-hu3band's death a baby was
born to her, and when the little creature was a few months old she found
that her husband's will gave the child to his parents, in Michigan. Protests
and tears were unavailing, for her own child was not hers legally, and
strangers took it as their own.
In New York divorce is very difficult, granted only for one cause, and
where the parents live apart the children belong to the father, unless a
court interferes in the mother's favor. Where husband and wife are sepa-
rated, the father can keep the children, and I have known instances where
the husband, accompanied by a lawyer and a police officer, has torn a child,
his child ! from the arms of its mother.
228 International Council of Women.
To return to the question of the joint earnings of the marriage copartner-
ship. One of the most unjust of the legal disabilities under which woman
suffers is, that she has no protection whatsoever in the possession of her share
of the family income. While wives are secured the right to their earnings
outside of the home, they can not legally claim a dollar for their life-long
services within the home. Even where a couple marry in their youth and
labor side by side on a farm or in a store, the woman working just as much
as the man, and perhaps more, because the cares of household and children
are added to business cares, every dollar that they both earn is legally the
husband's. This is the law in every State and Territory of the Union.
The importance of the headship of man is maintained by men, even the
most liberal. Last year the legislature of Ohio adopted a new code of laws,
which, it was boasted, gave to the married women of that State equal rights
with men ; but from the beginning to the end there was not a word in it
with regard to the joint earnings, and one of the sections gravely declared
that " the husband is the head of the family," as if any law could make a
man the superior, where his natural gifts did not entitle him to supremacy !
The proud Scottish chief said, " Where McGregor sits, there is the head of
the table," and the God-given endowment of intellectual power crowns
sometimes a queen.
This injustice of denying to the wife any legal share in the family income
has been a constant factor in the subjection of woman. There can be no
independence without pecuniary independence. Yet look at the position of
men's wives ; they toil day and night in the care of their families, and yet
never feel that they have any right to money in payment for their labors.
Whatever they have the husband " gives " them ; they are pensioners on his
bounty, not the rightful sharers of his purse. And who are they who thus
devote their lives to unrecompensed toil? They are the mothers of the race,
performing the most important service that is rendered by any citizen to the
State ; for what is the work of the farmer, the shopkeeper, the lawyer, or
even the editor, compared to the work of the mother who bears and rears
the coming generation*? How much the race suffers to-day from the pro-
longed subjection of the mothers we can never know. Every man is the child
of his mother as well as of his father, and whatever injustice, whatever of
degradation she has endured, is reflected by cowardice, by meanness, and by
loss of self-respect in her son.
Men prate much of an eight-hour law for their work. Do they ever agitate
for an eight-hour law for their wives ? Though I did hear of an industrious
oody who, rising at four o'clock, labored diligently for eight hours, and
when her husband came home at noon for his dinner told him that she was
practicing what he preached. Few wives have so much independence. Day
after day, year after year, they toil patiently, not even venturing to think
that they are entitled to any money of their own, doing the mightiest work
Legal Conditions. 220
that is done in this world without earning anything by their labor, their
sagacity, their frugality, their energy bringing no reward, and too often end-
ing their days in an old age of dependence and humiliation.
In the courts of justice throughout the land women have no protection by
the presence of their sex on the bench, in the jury-box, or at the bar. The
right of trial by a jury of their peers, which has been held so essential a pro-
tection, has been denied to women, except in a few instances in the Territories;
and we find in the statute-books of every State that women are held to full
accountability for violation of the laws, in which they are denied an equal
voice. Women are either grown up, or they are children ; if they have
reached the full stature of citizenship, then are they entitled to the protec-
tion which the exercise of the rights of citizenship gives; if they are chil-
dren, then they should be dealt with as children. We do not hang minors
in this country, but we do hang women. The only legal equality that has
been always accorded to them is the equality of the prison and the gallows.
Thus, briefly, I have endeavored to review some of the anomalies and cruel-
ties of woman's legal status in a republic that boasts of its freedom from all
oppression.
The dome of yonder proud Capitol, in which our national laws are made,
is surmounted by a statue of Liberty in the majestic form of woman. Year
after year she stands there, patiently holding the aegis and the spear; the
shield that has not yet been able to cover her woman's heart from blows,
the spear that as yet is powerless for her protection. Each new dawn that
flushes her helmet with rosy light brings nearer the day when she shall no
longer be a helpless mockery ; when all the clouds of custom and prejudice shall
be rolled away, and the sun's early rays, vivifying all nature, shall reveal the
goddess with her shield raised and her spear set in rest, and freedom for
woman shall mean justice everywhere, encircling the globe.
The Chairman. We have been hearing about the common law of En-
gland from an American. Now we will have something of it from an En-
glish woman, Mrs. Alice Scatcherd, of Leeds, who is a delegate from the
Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage and from the Women's
Liberal Associations of Darlington, Yorkshire, and Southport.
LEGAL CONDITIONS OF WOMEN IN THE THREE KINGDOMS OF GREAT BRITAIN
AND IRELAND.
Mrs. Scatcherd. Mrs. Devereux Blake has not in the least overstated to
you the brutality of the old common law of England. This morning some
one said to me in the hotel, ** I hope you will not be too bitter toward the
men to-night." I shall, at the outset of what I am going to say, assure you
that I am not actuated in the slightest degree by any feelings of bitterness
toward men, nor, I am sure, was the last speaker. But we must state these
things in order that we may prove our case, and I hope that you felt as
shocked as I did when I heard Mrs. Blake.
230 International Council of Women.
In speaking to you about the legal condition of women in the Three King-
doms I shall divide my subject under four headings — the Industrial Rights of
Women, the Property Rights of Women, the Family Rights of Women, and
the Personal Rights of Women.
First, as to industry. During the last forty years many trades and profes-
sions were opened to women. We rejoice with you in these new paths
of usefulness. But, at the same time, with us, we have seen another thing
going on which we deeply deplore, and that is the legislative restriction of
woman's labor. Parliament is, year by year, interfering more and more
in every department. Englishmen would not submit to have their labor
handicapped in that way for a single week. They have votes; they can
protect their rights. We have no votes, and we can not protect our rights.
This legislative restriction of labor is a very serious one for English women.
The first act which greatly interfered with women's labor was the Factory
Act of 1874. We were told that it was to be the last great interference with
woman's labor. It told a woman exactly how long she might work, at what
time, and almost where she could get her meals. But in 1878 there came a
further act of restriction, which was called the " Consolidation of Workshops
Act." And now all the dressmakers, all the large factories, all the seam-
stresses, and places where a fair number of women are employed are under
government inspection. Women have been turned out of the brick-fields of
England, and one or two attempts have been made to turn them out of the
chain and nail-making trades.
There is only one instance where women have successfully and at once
resisted legal interference, and that was the Pit Brow women of Lancashire,
where there are very large coal-mines. Women are employed very largely on
the brows of the pit to push the coal-carts and work in various ways. Some
good men though it was not fit work for women. Of course, this is always
done with the best intentions, but it lessens their wages and lessens their
freedom, and we do not thank men for acting upon these good intentions.
The women could not see the evil of legislative interference before it was
proposed actually to sweep them away at once from the pit-brows. They
couldn't have their living taken away from them, so they protested most
vigorously, and three or four of them went up to the House of Commons
and that piece of injustice really was prevented. Women can not see the
evil of interference with their labor when it only lessens their hours of work ;
but the right to limit woman's labor implies the denial that she shall labor'
at all. Women are hungry as well as men, and one of the first rights of a
human being is to be able to supply his or her hunger. And we say it is
most unjust and outrageous that the right to supply a woman's hunger should
be dependent upon the will of another.
Then as to the property rights of women. Single women in England,
Scotland, and Ireland have the same property-holding power as men. There
Legal Conditions. 231
is one law which is unjust to all women, and that is the law of intestacy. If
a man die without making a will, his male relatives come in for a much larger
share of his property than do his female relatives ; if a woman die without
making a will, again her male relatives come in for a larger share of her prop-
erty than her female relatives. For instance, if a man die without children
and he has no near relative, one would naturally suppose that his money
would go to his wife ; not so ; only half goes to her. Who gets the other half?
The crown; but if a woman die without making a will, and she has no chil-
dren or near relatives, and I know two or three such cases, who gets the
whole of the money ? Why, the husband, of course.
Before 1871 the property-holding rights of married women were simply
nil. The law was about as bad as it could be — a relic of the old barbarous
days when women literally were the slaves of men, their goods and chattels.
In 1871, after long years of very arduous labor, a bill was introduced which
had many bad clauses, but one exceedingly good clause. Before that time
every penny that a woman earned belonged to her husband, so that if a
woman had been out charring and working by the day, and had earned two
shillings or a half a dollar, the husband could claim the money, and not the
wife. But this bill of 1871 had this one good point about it — that it did
give to married women the money which they earned. So we accepted it
because it brought comfort and blessing to thousands and millions of homes
in our country. Why men have been so afraid to allow women to have what
is their own I can not tell. Where should a good wife be likely to spend
her money but on her husband and her children ? We do not say because
men have money that they therefore cease to be affectionate parents or spend
their money away from home, and I am quite sure that the possession of any
property will not induce women to act differently from what the men do.
We had the House of Lords to thank for the delay which has taken place in
the passing of the Married Woman's Property Act. They have most curious
ideas as to the liking of any married women to have money in their pockets
at all. They said, for instance, in this bill that if a woman had ^200 left
to her she might have that sum, but if it was over ,£200 she wasn't able to
take care of it, and was not to have it unless it was specified for her special
use. It is the law of England that talks about separate use ; we wives never
talk about separate use of our money.
Lord Fraser said that he, for one, couldn't see what a woman wanted to
have money in her pocket for to spend as she pleased. Perhaps, if Lord
Fraser had at one time possession of a large amount of property, and had
been suddenly deprived of it because he had entered into the honorable state
of marriage, he would understand why he would like to have some money
in his pocket to spend, and why women would like it.
Wives were regarded as the property of men. A dressmaker was injured
not many years ago in a railway accident near Dublin, and seriously injure
232 International Council of Women.
too. She had been separated from her husband for three or four years, and
had maintained herself by dressmaking. As a married woman could not sue
in the courts in her own name, she had to obtain the consent of her hus-
band, and he, seeing that some money was likely to be awarded, gave the
consent. He went into court. Ninety-five pounds damage was awarded.
Who got that ? Not the woman who was injured, but the man whose prop-
erty she was. Baron Dows remarked at that time : " This forms a very
strong argument for those women who are striking for political rights."
In 1883 a far better married woman's property act was passed ; and now
when a woman marries she does not lose control of her property. A man
used to say — he does so now — " with all my worldly goods I thee endow."
And then he used to take possession of everything the woman had, even to
the gown she stood up in. Since 1883 if a woman marries she retains con-
trol of her own property. Before 1883, if a woman had one hundred pounds
and a man had one hundred pounds, immediately they were married the
man had two hundred pounds and she had none. Well, we didn't like that,
ladies and gentlemen, and now we are glad to say the law is altered, and a
woman may buy and sell, save or dispose, or will or invest her property as
she likes. She may even have a bank account. I never shall forget when,
some years ago, I went to one of our banks in the town of Leeds to open a
banking account. There was some little talk among the officers, and at last
two gentlemen were brought to me, and said : "Is your husband with you;
has he come to say he gives his consent? " Isaid, "No." Theysaid: "Have
you brought a note from him to say that he gives his consent to your open-
ing an account here?" I said : "No; don't you care to have women's
banking accounts?" They said: "Well, without the full consent of the
husband, we have often a great deal of trouble with women's bank ac-
counts." I don't blame them. It is the state of the law that gives them so
much trouble about banking accounts of women.
A Woman now can even make a contract with her husband, and we are
hoping that under this new law and the power of making a contract with
your own husband to enter into business with him, that that may remedy the
evil ; because it is monstrous to think that a woman works for years and
years side by side with a man, saving his money, making him money, doing
her very utmost to push the business ; that then that man has a right to leave
her penniless. It is true even yet that an English husband has the right to
leave his wife penniless. It is monstrous, I think, that where husband and
wife have lived together in unity that he has the right to do such a thing. It
is not a case of what good men won't do ; it is a case of what bad men
will do. This in regard to England and Ireland.
A very good measure was passed for Scotland, which meted out a very
large share of justice to the wives there. A Scotch woman can not buy stock
or invest her money as easily as an English woman. I was talking with
Legal Conditions. 233
some American ladies yesterday, and, speaking of these matters, one turned
to another and said : " Just imagine her being so glad because they have got
their own property. Why, we have had it here for a long time. It is not a
thing for us to rejoice about." I am very glad that in many of the States of
your Union much more justice has prevailed than has prevailed with us, and
we shall not cease to rejoice about it for a whole generation, I suppose.
Then I ought to say there are many people who work very hard to have
alterations made in this law, but for the last twelve or fifteen years what we
have had is due largely to the efforts of two noble women, namely, Mrs.
Jacob Bright, wife of the member from Manchester, and Mrs. Elizabeth
Wolstenholme Elmy.
Before 1886 a woman hadn't any rights in the family whatsoever. Up to that
time a father might give away his child during the lifetime of the mother ;
he might will away that child at his death ; he might send it to any school
that he chose and have it brought up in any religion that he liked. It is
said that it is the mother's duty to teach the child to pray at her knees.
Why, the child belonged entirely to the father and she had no right
to say what he should be taught. In fact, the very expression in the
English law shows that. It says : " By nature and by nurture the father is
the sole parent." Such a condition of things was monstrous, and yet the
alterations we have secured leaves the law far from what it ought to
be. Still we have made a great step forward. Now, a mother, at the
father's death, is considered the guardian of her child. Before, a lawyer
always had to ask his client, " Do you leave your wife the guardian of your
child?" Doesn't it sound monstrous to ask if the mother was to be the
guardian of her own child? But now the wife is the guardian, even if her
husband appoint another guardian — that is, she is joint guardian, of course;
and if she be a widow she can now appoint a guardian to act for her
child in case of her death. Formerly, she could not do this. And,
supposing the father is not a good man, she can on her death during
his lifetime, appoint a guardian to act with him. The courts, of course,
would refuse to let such a guardian act, if the man were a good man. So
there is a good safeguard against any capricious appointment of guardian to
act with the father.
Thus far the most important clause of the new act is this : It says that the
courts shall take into consideration the wishes of the mother as well as of the
father. It sounds even strange to my own ears to speak in this way — the
wishes of the mother as well as of the father. Already that clause has brought
deep blessing in two or three cases to perfectly innocent and good wives, if
I had time to tell you about them, and will do to many more. Just before
I left home a case occurred, about which I know very little, but my husband,
who is a lawyer, was called upon by one of the Roman Catholic priests. A
woman was dying, and she wished to leave her money for the use of her child
16
234 International Council of Women.
during its lifetime, and we did not know quite what was to be done with it after-
wards, but the priest wished to know what was the power of the father, who
had not been a good man, over the child, and my husband came to me and
said: " Have you got a copy of the new Custody of Infants Act ?" I had, and
we found that this poor mother had the power to appoint a co-guardian for
her child with her husband. Under this act the poor have the same advan-
tages as the rich, because this act can be tried in the county courts of
England and the sheriff's courts of Scotland, and it applies to England, Ire-
land, and Scotland. This act was mainly the work of one woman ; certainly
nine-tenths of the energy which was brought to bear on this question was
through one woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy. The mothers of
England owe that woman a debt of which they are scarcely yet aware. As
to the personal rights of women, John Stuart Mill says : " Over his own per-
son, over his own body and soul, the individual is sovereign." It may be
so in the case of men, but it is certainly not so in the case of women.
We have had in England for nearly twenty years laws which outrage, in the
person of woman, every principle of liberty and freedom ; laws which con-
demn the women of our seaport towns to a life worse than abject slavery. I
refer to the infamous Contagious Diseases Acts. It is owing to the heroic efforts
of one noble woman, who warned the English women of the prison doors
that were closing upon them at the time those acts were introduced ; it is
owing chiefly to her heroic conduct, that those acts were swept away and En-
gland freed from such a disgrace — Mrs. Josephine Butler. In a circular
issued by the Executive Committee of this great Council there occurred
these words: "The position of woman anywhere affects the position of
woman everywhere." Never were truer words uttered. In many of the En-
glish dependencies and in one or two of the English colonies these infamous
acts are still in force. We never know when the cloven foot of State regu-
lation may show itself; we have to be ever vigilant and on the alert, because so
long as these acts remain in any part of our dominion, no English woman is
safe. No, so long as they remain in any country no women are safe, because,
to the disgrace of our legislators be it said, they copied these infamous
laws from France ; and it was the religious fervor of English women which
swept the laws away, and we pray God they may never return.
Another point which I would like to show is that the condition of woman
anywhere affects her condition everywhere. A few years ago a young man
of good family in the north of England, called Mr. Christopher Bethel,
went out to the south of Africa and there married a young girl belonging to
the Barolong tribe. He married her according to all the rights of the tribe -
he fulfilled every obligation which the chiefs of that tribe could demand of
him. It was an honorable marriage in every way. Six months after his
marriage he died, and three months after his little daughter was born.
Meantime his father in England had died and had left some money to his
Legal Conditions. 235
son in South Africa. This little girl was the heir to this money, and when
the case was tried in the English courts to see whether she should receive it
or not the English lawyers looked at each other, and they said that it was a
Barolong marriage, and that it was not an English marriage, and that a mar-
riage in the Barolong sense was not a marriage in the English sense ; that a
marriage in the English sense was not a marriage in the Barolong sense ; and
so we were told that it was a marriage and that it was not a marriage, and
the end of it all was that this was deemed not a marriage in the English
sense, and the judge hoped that the family of the husband would look after
and make some provision for his little girl. I appeal to all women, what
does this mean ? It means that hundreds and thousands of Englishmen who
go out into our dependencies — to Burmah, to India, to South Africa — may
contract these marriages with native women there according to the rites of
their tribe, and when they come home they have a right to cast off their
children and wives, if they like, because it is not a marriage according to the
English sense. I say that girl's case is my case, and the position of that
woman in South Africa affects every woman in the British Dominions. Do
you suppose that men who can go and do such things as that would be hon-
orable husbands for our daughters? We think not.
The laws of divorce are still grossly unequal. A husband in England has
only to prove one thing — adultery — and he gets a divorce. A wife has
to prove two things — both adultery and cruelty — on the part of the hus-
band. There is a gross inequality. In Scotland the law is much more just,
because it gives divorce for the adultery of either spouse and for willful
desertion of either spouse. By willful desertion is meant absenting yourself
for three years. In Ireland there is no divorce at all ; only judicial separa-
tion. You must know that I am one of those who would allow divorce for
other things than adultery. Why force a person to commit a disgraceful act
which damns him in the opinion of society in order to loosen a tie that has
become intolerable ? I have seen cases where the woman has been a per-
sistent profligate ; where the husband had no comfort whatever in his home ;
where his children were utterly neglected, and where the home was a mere
name. Should not the husband have a divorce from such a wife ? And in
the same way with a woman who has a drunken husband ; and if a father
persistently refused to maintain his family and neglected them, I would grant
a divorce for that.
I think that Ireland is better than England in the point I am going to
name. We have an unenviable notoriety for wife-beaters and wife-kickers
in England, especially in the north. Women at one time were burned, had
their hair pulled and their eyes knocked out, and were stamped upon, and
other things, all too horrible to tell ; and it was only in 1878 that a law was
passed which gave a woman a right to go before a local magistrate, and if
she said she went in fear of her life, the magistrate might grant separation.
236 International Council of Women.
It was at the discretion of the magistrate to judge what was the cruelty that
had been practiced. And I know magistrates, sometimes when they have
seen that a woman has not been very much hurt, say they don't like to turn
themselves into divorce courts, and they had better have another chance
and try again. Now, I maintain that if a husband has attempted to push
his wife down-stairs, or to gouge her eyes out, or to kick her, she should
be separated from him, and not have to wait until she is maimed for life and
then granted a separation.
Then I would speak of the laws which regulate our streets. Our streets
are free for men, but if a woman on our streets speaks to a man, a police near
may come up and accuse her of having accosted that man. He may take
her to the lock-up, and she must appear before a magistrate the next morn-
ing. If a person offers me a box of matches or oranges in the street and I
pass on, I don't call that molestation. I don't think with ordinary men, if
a woman speaks to them only once, they would call that molestation, and
they may pass on their way, never dreaming, perhaps, that this woman is
taken up by a third person and brought into the law court. If any one per-
sistently follows you and you turn around and say: " Now, you are molesting
me, and if you do not cease I will put you in charge of the police," that
is right; but if I do give any one in charge, I ought to appear in the police
court to accuse her ; and if any woman is taken up in our streets by a police-
man, it ought to be by a man who is willing to appear against her as plaintiff
and say that this woman has molested him. It is perfectly monstrous that
we give to a person who has nothing whatever to do with it, the right of
arresting and imprisoning a woman. If men were subject to the same indig-
nity that women are, they wouldn't bear it for one moment. They would
say: " We will have the law directly changed." I don't know how the re-
ligious women in England have let this law alone so long. Where is the use
of uttering prayers and paying for worship, and preaching about this thing
while you only benefit one person ?
I will echo with Mrs. Blake the wish that we should have women on our
juries. Then, again, I must say that the bastardy laws of England are sim-
ply a disgrace to our country. Brave will be the woman who interferes to
alter those laws. It is, indeed, a cross, but it must be done. How, again,
the religious women of England have allowed such things to be, I can not
tell.
Women, of course, have not the parliamentary franchise yet in England,
but I do not choose to speak to-night about the voting power which they
have, because that will be ably placed before you on Saturday night by one
of our English delegates, whom I deem it an honor to call my friend, Mrs.
Ashton Dilke. I want to say here, perhaps, what Mrs. Dilke would not like
to say for herself — what sort of constituency it is that has sent her among
you. It is the constituency of Newcastle-on-Tyne — a constituency renowned
Legal Conditions. 237
for its advanced thought and for its vigorous progressiveness and sound liberal-
ism. Mrs. Dilke's husband had the honor to represent this constituency in the
House of Commons, and these vigorous people have felt themselves honored
in choosing Mrs. Dilke and very proud to send her over to America as their
representative, and I must say that she is an able woman. I have some
right to speak for the north of England, and wherever I have been I found
that the men there honor Mr. Ashton Dilke, as do the women of the north the
name of Mrs. Dilke, as well they may. And I, for one, deem my country
most fortunate that it has secured so charming and able a representative to
come over to America, to this great Council.
When people tell you to leave politics alone, do not listen. A nation, or
any section of a nation, that leaves politics alone is doomed. We must at-
tend to politics, and we must not say that because we have not done so in the
past that, therefore, we can not now. Let me give you that beautiful thought
of your own great poet, James Russell Lowell, who is so well known in our
English homes, and who gives inspiration to the hearts of many of us :
" New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth ;
They must upward be and onward
Who would keep abreast of Truth.
Lo ! her camp-fires gleam before us ;
We ourselves must Pilgrims be—
Launch our Mayflower,
And steer right boldly
On the tempestuous, wintry sea,
Nor attempt the future's portals
With the past's blood-rusted kev."
Miss Anthony. I now present one who will talk to you of our native-
born people, the Indians — Miss Alice C. Fletcher, whom you all know and love
and want to hear.
THE LEGAL CONDITIONS OF INDIAN WOMEN.
Miss Fletcher. The popular impression concerning Indian women is,
that they are slaves, possessing neither place, property, nor respect in the
tribe. This impression is confirmed by observing that women are the work-
ers and the burden-carriers; that upon them falls all the drudgery of life.
They are also said to be bought and sold as wives, and their life is without
honor or happiness. In the face of this generally accepted picture of the
Indian woman, I can hardly hope to greatly modify this opinion by the state-
ment of facts. I must, therefore, ask you to receive what I say as from one
who, having lived among the people, sharing their poverty in summer and
in winter, has thus learned their social and religious customs.
The Indian tribe is not a mere collection of men and women ; it is a com-
pletely organized body, girt about by laws, unwritten, it is true, but rooted
in the religion and time-honored customs of the people. The tribe is divided
into clans or gens, each division having its location in the camp, and duties
in the tribe. These clans are organized and subdivided, having appropri-
238 International Council of Women.
ate officers to fulfill their rites and customs. These clans are based upon
kinship, and are the fundamental units of the tribe. A man is born into his
clan, into this family of kindred. In a large proportion of our Indian
tribes the mother carries the clan— that is, the man belongs to the clan or
kindred of his mother, not to that of his father. It is a general law among
a large portion of the tribes that a man may not marry in his own clan.
The family, as we understand it, can not exist in the tribe, as the husband
and wife represent two distinct political bodies, so to speak, which can never
coalesce, for neither the man nor the woman by marrying lose or change any
of their rights in their respective clans. There are no family names in an
'Indian tribe. Of course, I do not refer to the customs which have been
introduced by our race in many of the tribes, but to the native conditions
unmodified by the white man, which conditions are to-day more or less potent
in every Indian community.
The man is given in his infancy one of the names belonging to his clan.
These names are generally mythologic in their origin. He frequently takes
other names later in life, marking his career, but he never forgets or loses his
clan name. The woman is similarly named, and bears her birthright name
to her grave. Her children, if the clan follows the mother, are given names
proper to her clan, and are identified with her kindred and not with that of
their father. The child is never the heir of both his parents, since the claim of
the clan into which he is born is primal, and that of the family, as we know it,
secondary. For the same reason the wife never becomes entirely under the con-
trol of her husband. Her kindred have a prior right, and can use that right to
separate her from him or to protect her from him, should he maltreat her. The
brother who would not rally to the help of his sister would become a by-word
among his clan. Not only will he protect her at the risk of his life from insult
and injury, but he will seek help for her when she is sick and suffering.
When I last saw the Sun Dance, one of the young men who went through
all the tortures did it to redeem a vow he had made when his sister lay ill.
At that time he went out of her lodge, and, lifting his hand to the sun, he
promised that if she might recover he would tie his body to the tree and suffer
for her. The woman never, from her birth to her death, is without the strong
protecting arm of her kindred, to whom she can appeal in the case of injury.
This is the general law. There are, however, circumstances in which a
woman loses by her own act this right of appeal to her kindred, and there
is in some tribes a strong superstition concerning witchcraft, from the
dread suspicion of which there is no more protection for the Indian accused,
than there was for our own ancestors not many centuries ago.
In marriage trie woman, as a rule, is free to choose her husband if she so
desires. Whether or no she is forced to marry a man against her will to
gratify her family, depends upon the individual woman. Sti1!, matches are
made all the world over. The gifts made by the man to the family of his
Legal Conditions. 239
wife are not a price paid for her, but the recognition of certain claims and
demands upon him. The equivalent of these gifts is returned to the wife,
within a few months after her marriage, by her father or near of kin. Cus-
tom demands that the man should serve his father-in-law for a few years
prior to setting up a separate establishment. Should the husband prove
tyrannical or lazy in providing for his family, the wife tells him to go back
to his kindred, or if the pair are living in a lodge apart from her family she
takes down the lodge and departs, leaving her husband to watch the dying
embers of the fire. Her kindred will not send her back, nor would her
husband be allowed to coerce her to live with him.
It is true that Indian women are the laoorers and burden-bearers. That
is not because they are slaves, but because they belong to the non-combatant
portion of society. All that part of any society which is not demanded for
war is more or less engaged in labor. This is true among us, but the line is
not drawn on sex. We set aside a class of men to defend us by arms, another
class to defend us by laws, still another to execute the law, and so on ; the
remainder are employed in the industries and arts of peace. These labors
are shared by both sexes and do not belong to women alone, because our
society has become co-ordinated. In the Indian tribe you see a much sim-
pler form of society.
No international courtesy or law holds tribes in peace or neutrality, and,
until within a few years, every Indian village or camp was hourly in danger
of war parties. The Indian man had to sleep on his arms, to be ready at any
instant to defend his mother and sisters, his wife and children. This con-
dition of affairs made it impossible for the Indian to become a laborer, and
to this was added the necessity of hunting to procure meat and clothing.
The Indian man was the sole provider and protector, and the Indian
woman the conservor, of the home. He must ride free that he may strike
the needed game or the dreaded enemy. He could not be hampered by the
impedimenta of family bundles and burdens. Since all men were needed to
protect all women and children, to the women fell the ax, the hoe, and the
burden-strap, and, as a logical consequence, all the property belonged to the
women.
In olden times the women claimed the land. In the early treaties and
negotiations for the sale of land, the women had their voice, and the famous
Chief Cornplanter was obliged to retract one of his bargains because the
women forbade, they being the land-holders, and not the men. With the
century, our custom of ignoring women in public transactions has had its
reflex influence upon Indian custom. At the present time all property is per-
sonal ; the man owns his own ponies and other belongings which he has per-
sonally acquired ; the woman owns her horses, dogs, and all the lodge equip-
ments ; children own their own articles, and parents do not control the
possessions of their children. There is really no family property, as we use
240 International Council of Women.
the term. A wife is as independent in the use of her possessions as is the
most independent man in our midst. If she chooses to give away or sell all
of her property, there is no one to gainsay her.
When I was living with the Indians, my hostess, a fine looking woman,
who wore numberless bracelets, and rings in her ears and on her fingers, and
painted her face like a brilliant sunset, one day gave away a very fine horse.
I was surprised, for I knew there had been no family talk on the subject, so I
asked: "Will your husband like to have you give the horse away ? " Her
eyes danced, and, breaking into a peal of laughter, she hastened to tell the
story to the other women gathered in the tent, and I became the target of
many merry eyes. I tried to explain how a white woman would act, but
laughter and contempt met my explanation of the white man's hold upon his
wife's property.
It has been my task to explain to the Indian woman her legal conditions
under the law. In bringing our legal lines down upon her independent life
I have been led to realize how much woman has given of her own freedom
to make the strong foundation of the family and to preserve the accumula-
tion and descent of property. All this was necessary, that the pressure of
want should be removed, time for mental culture secured, and the develop-
ment of civilization made possible to the race — a sacrifice needful, but
nevertheless a sacrifice. As I have tried to explain our statutes to Indian
women, I have met with but one response. They have said: "As an In-
dian woman I was free. I owned my home, my person, the work of my own
hands, and my children could never forget me. I was better as an Indian
woman than under white law." Men have said: "Your laws show how
little your men care for their women. The wife is nothing of herself. She
is worth little but to help a man to have one hundred and sixty acres."
One day, sitting in the tent of an old chief, famous in war, he said to me :
' ' My young men are to lay aside their weapons ; they are to take up the work of
the women; they will plow the field and raise the crops; for them I see a
future, but my women, they to whom we owe everything, what is there for
them to do? I see nothing! You are a woman; have pity on my women
when everything is taken from them." Not only does the woman under our
laws lose her independent hold on her property and herself, but there are
offenses and injuries which can befall a woman which would be avenged and
punished by the relatives under tribal law, but which have no penalty or
recognition under our laws. If the Indian brother should, as of old, defend
his sister, he would himself become liable to the law and suffer for his cham-
pionship.
I have been considering strictly the legal conditions of Indian women under
tribal and under our own laws. I have not touched upon customs which
bear heavily upon them. Many of these customs can not be reached by
the law. Their amelioration must depend upon other influences which
Legal Conditions. 241
it is the function of Christian philanthropy to exercise. I would have
you, my friends and sisters, take pity on the Indian woman. Her oki-
time individual independence is gone. She has fallen under the edge
of our laws — an edge few of us have ever felt. We do not live under
the letter of the law, but in the midst of a growing, broadening Christian
spirit that is each year making its mark upon our statute-books and empha-
sizing the right of every human being to life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap-
piness. Meanwhile our Indian sisters are called to enter our civilization,
and for them the path is full of difficulty and hardship. They must lose
much they hold dear and suffer wrongs at the hands of those whose added
legal powers, when untempered by an unselfish, cultured spirit, makes the
legal conditions of woman akin to the crudest slavery. I crave for my Indian
sisters, your help, your patience, and your unfailing labors, to hasten the day
when the laws of all the land shall know neither male nor female, but grant
to all equal rights and equal justice. .
Miss Anthonv. Now, friends, we have had at the Riggs House during
the last week one of the race about which Miss Fletcher has been talking —
an Indian — Princess Viroqua. She is here on the platform, and, since we
are representatives of all nationalties and all people, I want her to step for-
ward and let you look at a native-born Indian.
Princess Viroqua. Madam president, ladies, and gentlemen : I am truly
glad to be allowed to stand on this platform with these great ladies, of whom
I have read as long ago as I can remember.
Miss Anthony. The next speech will be from Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage.
Dr. Ruth M. Wood, who is on the programme to-night, will be heard to-
morrow morning, and as she has had a large experience in her profession,
she will be able to tell us much on the question of social purity.
Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage followed in an able speech on
''Law in the Family," which is omitted, at her request, as she
desired all the space allowed her to be reserved for what she
said in the Religious Symposium. In her judgment that phase
of the question, at this stage in woman's development, is more
important for consideration than the legal or political.
Miss Anthony. It is with great satisfaction I now present to you a woman
who was a very rebellious student in Oberlin College. In the early days of
that venerable institution, girls were not allowed to read their own orations,
that service being invariably performed by one of the " superior sex." This
rule was very exasperating to the girls of the graduating class, and the one
about to address you put her foot down, that if she were not permitted to
deliver her own oration no man should. She is here to-day — a delegate
from the American Woman Suffrage Association, Mrs. Lucy Stone.
Mrs. Stone. All the addresses of the evening, except Miss Fletcher's
242 International Council of Women.
about the Indians, have been devoted to showing how unequal everywhere
are the conditions of women as compared with those of men. If that idea
can only be made to take a firm lodgment in people's minds, this evening's
meeting should lead to many vital changes. Yesterday a little item cut from
a newspaper, with a pencilled note, was handed to me, asking what it
meant. The newspaper slip said, in substance, that in Massachusetts, where
women have the right to vote for school committee, out of so many thousands
of them who are old enough to vote, and might vote if they chose, only about
three thousand voted. The note asked how this could be explained.
I should like to ask the reporters to pay attention to this, because there
have been so many misrepresentations about the school vote of women in
Massachusetts. Our Secretary of State, Mr. Pierce, has made an official
report year after year, and there have been very serious mistakes in it. His
report is based upon the reports made to him by the town clerks as to the
number of women voting in each town. In 1885, the town clerk of Milford,
in Worcester County, published a certified statement, giving the number of
women who had registered and voted in Milford during the three years preced-
ing. According to this certified statement, nearly five times as many women had
voted in Milford alone as were declared by Secretary Pierce's report to have
voted in the whole county. On investigation, it was found that every year,
for three years, the number of women voting in the city of Worcester had
been set down in the official report as the number voting in the county of
Worcester. After this, the church in Secretary Pierce's town gave a sociable,
and it was announced that the gentlemen would cook the supper, and that
Secretary Pierce would contribute a pie. Some sarcastic person said that if
his pie were as badly cooked as his figures, it would not be a very good pie.
I do not suppose there was any intention to misrepresent, but a serious mistake
of that kind, repeated for three years running, certainly shows carelessness
somewhere.
I think that deep down in the heart of every man there is a sense of loy-
alty to wofnan. They do not want to hurt us nor to do us an injustice ; but
they do not think. They were born under the old common law and edu-
cated by it. When the child was born, and the question was asked whose
child it was, the old common law said it was the father's child ; and when it
came to marriage, the law gave the property of the wife to the husband. The
laws have been changed ; they have been made better, infinitely better, but
we have had a great deal of trouble in getting the changes made. I remem-
ber how many years we asked that married women might have a right to
their own clothes. It took us eleven years to get that law changed. Then
we asked that widows might have a right to be buried in the family lot ; and
how many years it took us to get that ! But we got it. And so on, one
thing after another has been gained ; but I hope no man will please himself
by thinking we have now got all we want.
Legal Conditions. 243
I remember a little incident which illustrates very well the position of
women in the family under the law. I was driving into Boston one day in
the early gray of the morning, and about two miles from the city a little street
gamin ran up and asked for a ride. My heart always warms to children,
and I said, " Yes." He climbed in, and I said, " Where are you going so
early in the morning?" He said, " I build the fire every morning in a store
on Devonshire street, and I have to go early, but I 'most always get a ride.
I ask them, and somebody 'most always takes me up." Pretty soon he
began to tell me all about his family. He said : " My mother gets up early,
and builds the fire and gets my breakfast, and gets me up and sends me off.
Then she gets my father's breakfast, and gets him up and sends him off.
Then she gets the breakfast for my little brothers and sisters, and sends them
off to school, and then when they have gone she and the baby have their
breakfast." I said, "How many are there of you?" He said, "There
are ten children of us;" and he added proudly, "The baby can walk as
well as I can." I said, " How much pay do you get for going into the city
so early and making this fire ?" "I get $2 a week." " How much does
your father get? " He gets $2 a day." "And how much does your mother
get?" The little fellow looked bewildered as he turned his childish eyes up
to my face and said, "Why, she don't work for anybody." " Why," said
I, " I thought you said she worked for all of you." " Oh, yes, for us, she
does," he said, " but there ain't no money into it."
That little boy told the case as it is. Into that family he brought his $2
a week, and the father brought his $12 a week, and doubtless they made
the best of it they could, and shared their poverty together ; and so
it often is among those who are richer, they share what they have
and do the best they can. Yet, after all, the woman stands, whether
she is the wife of a rich man or a poor man, in the same place. For
her, there is "no money in it." The law can take no measure of
those finer compensations that are not counted by gold, but here the law
counts the woman as earning nothing and having nothing of her own.
Mothers of families are classed in the census among "non-producers."
Every man thinks he supports his wife, and very likely that man whose wife
got the boy his breakfast and the father his breakfast, and took care of them
all, thought he supported her. Perhaps he thought she did her part well and
was grateful to her. But what we want is to root out of the world the idea
that the part the woman contributes to the family is not as valuable as the
man's part. If a man has sheep or cattle on a ranch, he pays a man what
it is worth to take care of them. But when the mother watches over the
children her labor is reckoned as having no value. I well remember how
my mother took care of us children, perhaps in twenty years not having a
night of sound sleep ; how well I remember her hand stretched out to me in
the trundle-bed to see if I was sleeping, and how well I remember her going
244 International Council of Women.
in the night into another room to see if all was right with the children there !
Through all those years, how she watched over us in sickness and in health,
caring for our food and clothes, our morals and our manners ! When a
woman engages in this high service it ought not to be for her a poverty-
stricken condition. It ought to make her the sharer of the income and of
the property interest, that she may be really a queen in her home and the
equal of her husband.
Women have no right to trial by a jury of their peers ; we may be impris-
oned, fined, or hanged, and we have no power to say anything about it. A
little girl from her cradle up to womanhood, whether it is a dollar she has
earned and wishes to spend, or a deed she wishes to make, finds everything
settled for her by the law, without her having any voice in it, as if she were
an idiot. There is not a man living who would be willing to be in such a
position under the law as a woman is in ; he would be stricken with horror
to think of being in a place where all his interests were settled for him by
some one else. Oh, men ; noble, generous men ! there is not one of you
who should not try to make a public sentiment which shall change these laws*
and make them as just to women as they are to you. To-day, when your
daughter marries, and you send her out from your home, your blessing going
with her, you hope her husband will be kind and noble ; yet remember
that if he is kind to her, the law is not. In Massachusetts, and most of
the other States, how many days do you think a widow may stay after
her husband's death in his house, the home where her children were born
and reared ? The law says she may stay in that house forty days without
paying rent. Think of that ! What man would like his daughter to come
-to that? In Maine, the legislature, at its last session, meaning to be
kind to women, changed the number of days to ninety, instead of forty.
I heard a young man say before the Woman Suffrage Committee of the
Massachusetts legislature, " I don't' want my wife to be told she may stay in
our house just so many days after I am dead. While I am here, my strong arm
helps to bring my wife what she needs. When I am dead, and can not bring
her anything, I do not want the law to pluck at her and leave her only forty
days to stay in the home where I have taken care of her for years." There
are many noble men who would say the same. My grief is that they do not
try to make the laws better for their daughters and their wives.
Each class must look out for itself in these matters, and then they will be
looked after. Mrs. Poyser said, " Women are foolish ; God almighty made
them to match the men." Suppose women are foolish. There never yet
was a woman so foolish that, when the law said she had no right to her chil-
dren, the mother, though she might be as timid as a bird, would not have
rried in the best way she could, to assert her right to her children.
I beg for women the full right of citizenship, with the absolute certainty
that it will be safe for women to excercise that right. God made the law
Legal Conditions. 245
that binds the mother to her child by ties that nothing can obliterate. I
have seen a woman who had been half a century a maniac, and during all
those years had not seen her children, and when, after fifty years, they came
back to her, not the children who left her, but gray-haired men, she looked
at them, utterly unrecognizing them ; but, when one of them bent down and
took her hand in his and called her mother, that woman, a maniac for half a
century, gathered the hand to her lips and then to her heart, while she strug-
gled to gather up the scattered threads of memory. All those years of insanity
could not destroy the maternal instinct utterly ; God took care of that.
Whoever turns his heart against a man, it is not his mother. He may
commit crime, defy human laws ; he may be so bad a man that his wife fears
him and his children flee from him, and the law may be searching for him,
but if he comes to the old hearthstone where his mother sits — she is where
she used to sit, waiting for him — and if he comes home to her stained with
crime she is still his mother, and she opens her arms wide and says : " Poor
fellow, by so much the more as everybody else shuts you out, by so much the
more will I take you in." And so she does, and so do all the other mothers ;
and it is because this eternal law binds the mother and the child.
And whenever a question comes up as to whether there shall be houses of
prostitution, or gambling saloons or drinking places, the first question the
mother asks is, " Will it make the town a safe place for my sons and
daughters?" She thinks what will be safe for them will be safe for her. God
never made a mother yet who didn't a hundred times think what would be
good for her children before she thought once of what would be good for
herself. Mothers must always be the conservative forces of the world by
the very fact that they are mothers. Oh, men, help them into power that
they may aid in making the laws, and let us all try together as mutual
helpers in this matter.
Miss Anthony. Remember, friends, to-morrow afternoon Mrs. Cleve-
land gives us a reception at the White House. The delegates to the Coun-
cil, invited speakers, and officers of the Association will report at the Riggs
House at half-past three, that we may go in a body to pay our respects to
the wife of the President.
The Council is now adjourned until 10 o'clock to-morrow morning.
FRIDAY, MARCH 30, 1888.
MORNING SESSION— FOR WOMEN ALONE
SOCIAL PURITY.
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Vice-President of the National
Woman Suffrage Association for Illinois, presiding. Invoca-
tion by Martha McClellan Brown. After the singing of the
hymn, "Nearer, my God, to Thee," Mrs. Harbert made the
opening address.
A NEW CRUSADE.
Mrs. Harbert. Amid the harmony of this historic week let us hope the
discordant note, "America for American?," has been forever lost ; while, in
lieu thereof, the daughters of many lands take up the thrilling chorus of our
illustrious forefathers, "America for the oppressed;" while we would also
breathe the benediction of our beloved Lucretia Mott, " Truth for authority,
not authority for truth."
Dearly beloved delegates from the Mother Country and the Old World,
you are welcome home to this country made for you and for us by the
patriots of the world. Surely the daughters of India, France, England, Ire-
land, Denmark, Finland, and Norway have chartered rights in a republic
where equality is made possible by the lofty principles of our patriotic fathers.
Truly, ' ' the place whereon we stand is holy ground, ' ' and if any one moment
can be supreme, when each is divine, to such a moment have we come, and I
am confident that could our united thoughts be voiced as we approach the
discussion of this momentous question — social purity — it would be a strong
desire that we might so radiate the light of truth that we could " speak to
the people, and they would move forward." We are here in search of
foundation principles on which to lay the corner-stone of a new civilization ;
to aid in establishing a government of the people; to make over the bach-
eloric apartments of state into a national home, where there shall be responsi-
bility and opportunity for mothers; hence, greater comfort for fathers, and,
as a result of joint parental endeavor, protection and equal rights for the
children. While men continue to hold the mental, moral, and spiritual
powers of woman as unworthy of equal recognition with their own, in church
and state, they and their sons will lightly esteem her happiness and honor.
Do my words seem harsh ? I would that they were untrue. But turn to the
laws and compare the punishment meted out to betrayer and betrayed, and
tell me if I speak untruly. We may flood the world with petitions and
Social Purity. 247
pledges, burden the air with sighs and tears, but woman will not become a
true helpmeet for man until she is everywhere recognized, and motherhood
and fatherhood held equally sacred. Woman can never give birth to the
highest type of children until she is free to develop her own powers. We
all love and honor womanly women as we do manly men, but we have never
yet known a truly womanly woman — a woman perfectly free to develop her
own powers; never have known a woman whose education, conscience, and
creed have not been influenced by laws made by men ; and, since the univer-
sal testimony of our brothers is that " woman is a conundrum " — an enigma,
an unknowable being — is it not fair to conclude that in legislating for this
enigmatical being our fathers have sometimes blundered ?
Woman, remanded to the harem, nursery, or kitchen, denied opportunity
and relieved from responsibility, has become the victim of a narrow love for
toys, trinkets, and jewels, and thereby of her own and of man's passions.
The brave and true spirits, masculine and feminine, see and know that the
enfranchisement of woman means a moral uplifting for the race. The rec- "
ognition of the divinity of humanity indicates our work ; not revolution or
the slow process of evolution, but prompt, loving amelioration of the condi-
tion of the children is the watch-word of our new crusade. Said our honored
and beloved champion, Wendell Phillips: "When all England was at fault
and wandering in the desert of a false philosophy concerning the West India
question and African slavery, Elizabeth Herrick, with the true insight of a
spiritual woman, wrote out the simple proposition, ' immediate, uncondi-
tional emancipation,' which solved the problem and gave freedom to a race."
So, to-day, in order to solve the questions of labor and capital, temperance
and social evil, we demand the enfranchisement of woman and immediate
attention to the condition of children.
How will this solve the problem ? Think of it. The children of this
generation will be the sovereign people of the next. If the children of to-
day are unprotected, untrained, unskilled, ignorant of the principles of the
equal rights of humanity, then will the sovereign people of the next generation
be dissolute, selfish, ignorant, and their legislation unjust ; but with all the
children gathered into industrial homes and schools, taught the divine phil-
osophy of the Golden Rule, and that law is only majestic in proportion to
the truth upon "which it is based, a new civilization will dawn. Think
what it would mean to the State of Pennsylvania if the thousands of children
referred to yesterday, could be released from factories and mines. Let it be
our high privilege to sound clearly and distinctly the clarion note of the new
crusade — the crusade of the mothers in behalf of the neglected children."
Thousands of little children would be released from their imprisonment in
stores and factories, where the present system of fines and overseership has
reduced them almost to slavery. Their work could be done by older persons
far more able to enter the arena of industrial warfare. Think of it, in one of
248 International Council of Women.
our cities, by an actual house-to-house visitation we discovered, that only one
child in four is receiving any education. With these children, the future sov-
ereigns of the state, gathered into industrial schools and homes, could not the
fathers and mothers decree that, in order to protect them from being tempted
or debauched in childhood, no liquor saloon or house of ill-repute should be
allowed near these sacred precincts? What more sacred shrines could hal-
low a country than schools for the children ? * * *
It is now my pleasure to welcome, on behalf of the Council, the Vice-
President of the National Woman Suffrage Association for Tennessee,
Elizabeth Lisle Saxon.
"THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE."
Mrs. Saxon. A ship was seen sailing in the Southern Atlantic and
making signals of distress. Another vessel bore down upon her, and the
captain called out : "What is the matter?" "We are out of water; we
are dying of thirst,'" was the reply. '* Dip it up; you are in the mouth of
the Amazon River," shouted the commander. These men were perish-
ing of thirst, ignorant that the boundless, fresh water was all about
them. The organized womanhood of the world is in the great expanse of
boundless freedom in thought and act, if they choose to open their eyes and
avail themselves of it, they will find around them a sympathizing and helpful
body of men and women, hungry for the life-giving truth as they are for
freedom from sin and crime.
Experiences of a life spent in active work for my own sex, convince
me that the greatest bar to human improvement lies in the false educa-
tion and the cramped nature of woman ; in the shams and shame that
have enveloped sexual life. Born in the midst of slavery, reared to woman-
hood surrounded by its influences, I hated it because of the conditions in
which it placed woman. I saw men made all the laws that controlled the des-
tiny of women and the entire life of the colored race of both sexes, and
established, by their action and approval, customs that rendeied it impossible
for questions touching upon sexual matters in their far-reaching influence to
be discussed by women, and that everywhere only the most superficial and
perverted views were held by men, and shame in all concerning them by
women.
I saw that white men despised an unchaste woman, but mingled freely
with corrupt men, while negro men seemed to be, by some law, indifferent to
unchastity in woman, and they often acted as procurers for white men of
untainted young girls of their own race ; and slavery was the cause.
I saw that where slavery did not prevail the ranks of this most awful class
had to be kept filled with white women, drawn from all ranks, and never
allowed to return to respectable life again. Time taught me that slavery had
caused this indifference in negro men ; their changed condition has con-
vinced me of its truth by seeing that the negro man has imitated the white,
and, by education and freedom, a radical change in woman's views will be
wrought, and she, too, will learn to demand a higher morality from man.
Social Purity. 249
I saw, as a student, that the Bible allowed both slavery and concu-
binage, and from pulpits in the North I heard slavery defended and the
Bible quoted to prove it God-ordained ; and every opponent of woman's
education and advancement was drawing his ready arguments from this
sacred book.
I turned in passionate despair to my father for an explanation. This was
his reply : " Only through her own effort and struggles can woman be free,
or her conditions be changed ; strive to understand these evils, and fearlessly
denounce them — the truth alone can make you free." I literally lived in>
Bible pages ; while one page enchanted me, another was to me almost mad-
dening. I saw that in Christ woman had an unfailing friend ; but, amid the
wild combat of argument and censure, I saw well-nigh every weapon to hold
us in bondage men claimed to find within these pages. Well-nigh all women
were against me, and all men condemned my views, showing me with tri-
umphant scorn that the curse of the race was brough't by woman.
Pity, but do not blame me, when I say I at last spurned it from me, crying
it is a bar, a curse, a hindrance to the race. Like Paul of old, I can never
tell how it came to me, but there did come to me an overwhelming expe-
rience that carried me, like a whirlwind, to the very foot of the cross. I
had been honest, I had sought light with weepings and groanings uncounted,
and I turned to my Bible with renewed zeal, as though the scales had fallen
from my eyes, and it glowed with the light of the dayspring from on high.
No infidel power had shaken it, and though to science it had yielded its days
for periods and that the sun stood still, yet in its spiritual clearness, light and
beauty shone where cruel dogma alone had been seen, and now in the light
of contemporaneous history, the most scoffing skeptic sees its spiritual mean-
ing, and can understand why it holds its place, rooted in human affection.
Man's spirit is mightier than all else, for it is of God. Thought is more
powerful than horsemen or chariots, its victories mightier than those won by
the tramp of armed hosts, the booming of cannon or shedding of blood.
The Biblical record opens with the expressed statement : "In the begin*
ning God created man ; male and female created he them and gave them
dominion over the earth, to rule over it, subdue it, increase and multiply,
and replenish the earth." In the fifth chapter the genealogies of the Adamic
race are given : "In the beginning God created man ; male and female
created he them, and called their name Adam. ' ' The Bible is an Eastern book,
written under Eastern inspirations. Moses and Christ were Eastern men; the
latter never spoke save in parables. Between the first and the fifth chapters,
comes the story of the Adamic fall from a state of innocence of one man
and one woman, evidently giving the spiritual meaning of the fall of the
human race. In a history embracing over two thousand years the Bible
makes no reference to this story of the garden and its consequences, and
since the coming of Christ for two thousand years we have preached Christ
17
250 International Council of Women. \
and practiced Moses, in all our dealings with woman — stoning her to death
and letting the man go free.
Reviewing this story of the fall, Christ declares he came to restore all
things, to verify the Scriptures. He demanded the same recognition of sin
in man as in woman, the same moral law, preached the first sermon for
woman's equality before the law. If this be taken away as non-scriptural,
we are left the words, " Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her in
his heart, hath committed adultery with her already." Paul and all of the
apostles echoed this sentiment of Christ, demanding "continence, chastity,
and spiritual truth and life."
In the mascrline interpretation of the Bible woman has been largely ig-
nored ; or, as in this Edenic story, she has been used to bar the path to
human progress. The hour has come. If in this chapter lies her curse, out
of it, also, comes her blessing and her reward. Woman must now realize
that in her giving truth on these lines alone can the race be redeemed, and
Christ's rule of love begin on earth, and his coming be made a verity.
Only realize what we have been under those conditions of false modesty
and ignorance of the divine law of life and all its possibilities. The Garden
of Eden can only be represented showing the face of the race under the
dominion of lust, using the vital functions of life as a means of dragging
down all spirituality. What is the most subtle of the beasts of the field that
tempted woman? What is more subtile than desire? What thing ever
crawled upon its belly and ate dust ; could eat no spiritual food all the days
of its life, but lust? "I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed.
It shall bruise thy head, but thou shalt bruise his heel." Has not his heel,
his physical body, been bruised by this serpent in the taint that is shown in
scrofula, cancer, consumption, and every hideous disease from thousands of
centuries of unbridled transmissions of syphilitic poisons?
Has not the promise rolled down the ages to woman, that her seed
should bruise the serpent's head ? Will not the holy sacrifice, the holy
teachings, all the lifting up of woman's promised seed, the Christ, and
the preached word, show the promise has been kept, and the demand
still holds a crucifixion of man's lower nature? Paul, following Jesus,
teaches: "They are Christ's who crucify the affections with the lusts."
The donning of fig-leaf aprons was plainly man's inner and purer spiritual
nature, shrinking and cowering, ashamed before the brutalization of his
higher faculties — the divine powers .of procreation perverted to unbridled
license. We weep with Paul when he, in his spiritual warfare, fights " this
thorn in his flesh," and in his buffetings of Satan, triumphs in the strength of
Christ over his own lower nature.
We have sowed the wind in ignorance ; we are reaping the whirlwind in
divorces, rape, murder, entailed upon children conceived in lust andgestated
with its poison in every vein. I lay no sacrilegious hands on the truths of
Social Purity. 251
Holy Writ. I sweep back the curtain that the light of divine love may-
enter my own soul, and gladly would I lay down life to make a firm path for
younger women. I could not die, so I lived for women. Then I boldly
lay the ax at the root of the upas tree of crime. I implore you women, old
and young, to look back on your own ignorance of all this law of human
needs and realize what is around us and what fruit secrecy has borne. Gather
to your very souls the children in loving confidence. Show both sons
and daughters the sanctities and the terrors of this awful power of sex,_its
capacities to bless or curse its owner and the little helpless being in the
mother's womb. Teach that the building of character begins in the very
hour of conception ; that he or she who can give the color of hair, gait,
laughter, and looks, can bequeath the tainted appetites and low diseases.
Teach that the holy thought, the reverent prayer, the dwelling in the king-
dom of peace, belongs of right to the mother builder. The self-sacrifice,
the loving sympathy, the mighty upholding of all her nature in this, her
divine mission, that is the father's duty. Nature furnishes every mother a
beautiful lesson for her children. Why forever cram with book-lore to the
exclusion of tender counsel on lofty possibilities? Mothers say, "I can't
tell my children these things." Then some boy or girl will. Your Bible
will betray you. Every child knows that the hen lays her eggs. His nature
and his innocence sees no harm in this. Tell him, as you show him the
tiny life-germ in the egg as you prepare your food, that here is the unfolded
story of creation ; show him that in just such shaped and softly-lined rooms
all animal life cradles in the mother's body, from its lowly form up to man
walking in God's image on earth. Here every nerve and bone and muscle
of the wonderful house God's spirit dwells in is created — wrought from her
life-blood He is bone of her bone, life of her life ; woven into being, with
every gift of her body and soul consecrated to his service with her daily and
hourly prayer, sent into life with the pangs of agony that bid her stand in
the very shadow of death's wing that she may cradle him in her arms, and
make for long months, her bosom the cup of his life, the couch of his rest,
his refuge in sorrow, his pillow in death.
I have spoken for twelve years to men alone and to women alone, and to
men and women together. I have spoken to an audience as large as this of
men, and I the only woman in the room, and have spoken as freely as I
have spoken here. The men, instead of going to the door when I was
through, stormed the platform, and, with tears running down their faces,
said, " Thank God, that woman has at last realized that we are agonizing
as she agonizes." I ask that women who can consecrate themselves to this
work will speak to men everywhere. Oh, my friends, I implore you not to
go out of this house and say they talked shameful things. I tell you that
" the truth shall make you free." From all parts of Kansas I am receiving
letters to come back and speak on this question. I received one this
252 International Council of Women.
morning to go and speak to a teacher's institute with over five hundred stu-
dents, saying that it was this imperative question that was needed. Then I
beg you throw aside the garments of shame, stand erect in the God-born
majesty of true womanhood, and dare to be free to work out the whole great
good.
Mrs. Harbert. Surely we can pay no higher compliment to Mrs. Anna
Rice Powell than to state that she is the delegate from the New York Com-
mittee for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice, and associate editor
of the Philanthropist, published in New York, which does most valiant serv-
ice for social purity.
THE INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION FOR THE ABOLITION OF STATE REGULA-
TION OF VICE.
Mrs. Powell. It has been said that the history of prostitution is the his-
tory of woman. From the days of barbarism f« the present time, whether
held as a slave or a toy, she has been its pitiful victim. It has been assumed
that there must be a certain portion of women set apart for that lowest form
of subjection — the service of sensuality. Writers like Lecky have recorded
it in cold type that the virtue of the favored woman is safe only at the
expense of a pariah class — a fearful sacrifice, indeed. The assumption is an
insult to manhood in its best estate. . '
As. a result of this base doctrine of the necessity of social vice have come
the efforts to license it, with police and medical supervision, in the vain at-
tempt to escape its own penalty. In Continental Europe legalized immo-
rality has existed for many years, and the degrading slavery it imposes upon
victimized women has been little understood by the favored classes. It is a
failure in a sanitary point of view, as might have been expected, and its re-
sults morally are most deplorable, as the condition of the countries where it
exists shows. How could it be otherwise, since it does not assume to check
the sin of licentiousness itself, only to provide for men a safe indulgence
in it?
In 1866-69, tnis system was introduced into Great Britain by act of Par.
liament, ostensibly to protect the health of the army in certain military dis-
tricts. It was disguised under the name of the Contagious Diseases Acts,
and few comprehended the true character of the measure till it was exposed.
To a group of noble men and women belongs the honor of making the vig-
orous resistance to it which culminated, in 1886, in its repeal. But it fell to
the lot of Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, the wife of a clergyman of the Church
of England, to be the chosen leader in this historic movement. A baptism
of sorrow had prepared her in a special manner for the needed consecration
of spirit, and an experience in rescue-work among sinning women enabled
her to feel keenly the deeper degradation to which it doomed them.
In the name of outraged womanhood she proclaimed a rebellion. It was
hard enough already for these outcasts to regain the lost path of virtue, since
Social Purity. 253
society never forgives in women what it so readily condones in men; but
once registered as professional prostitutes and subjected to the indignity of
the enforced surgical examination, to which, under the arbitrary police
power granted, even innocent girls, on mere suspicion, might, and often
did, become victims, their reformation was well-nigh hopeless. The penal-
ties imposed were not for the sin itself, but for failure to comply with certain
police regulations designed to protect and localize it. If pronounced free
from disease they were given a government permit to ply their unholy trade
and tempt men to share it by an assumed sanitary safety.
The only argument any virtuous person can offer in favor of the system is
the assumed protection from the contagion of disease. Many good people
have been honestly led to encourage it here as abroad, in the delusive hope
that thus the suffering brought upon innocent wives and children by the
transgressions of guilty husbands and fathers might be averted. It would
seem very illogical to expect to escape the results of this sin by any treat-
ment of it so superficial ; but in the long ago, before the woman M. D.
had been evolved, there had crept into medical literature recommenda-
tions of this kind, and so professional authority was claimed for it. It is
an evidence that it is not good for man to be alone in the medical profes-
sion.
In this new era women as physicians have been a mighty power in help-
ing to show what is involved in such a system, for the honor of motherhood
and the sanctuary of the home. It needs to be studied from the standpoint
of both men and women, with a goodly faith in the possibilities of virtue.
To the many noble men in the profession who so believe, some of whom
rallied to Mrs. Butler's support and helped to emphasize the fact that what
is morally wrong can never be physiologically right, the women of all lands
should give due honor.
A direct moral appeal to the hearts of the people would have met with a
prompt response, but as the way was blocked by the sophistries of law and
medicine, the task imposed was arduous. Then there was great difficulty in
treating so delicate a question with the publicity that was needed. It cost
much for refined, cultivated women to meet the criticisms invoked against them.
Hitherto it had been thought that favored women should not know of this
great evil in the world. Men might know, must know, but it was for the
■convenience of those who wished to lead a dual life that it be well concealed
from the general knowledge of good women.
Undaunted by abuse, misrepresentation, and even threats against life itself,
Mrs. Butler and her allies went steadily on in their work. Her labors hitherto
had been private, but now she became a voice for the voiceless, and from
that time to the present hour she has borne this cross — "despising the
shame of having to speak of shame " — that she might plead for justice for all
women, irrespective of condition, and proclaim an equal code of morals for
254 International Council of Women.
both sexes. Never before in the world's history had the system of pros-
titution been thus aggressively assailed. It seemed to the worldly wise but a
futile protest from a frail woman, yet we are beginning to see what our own
Mrs. Howe has chronicled with the poet's touch that, as an instrument in
the divine hand, "she has altered the course of the world " and set its cur-
rents toward puri»:y.
The conflict was not alone with the advocates of this evil system of a
drilled harlotry in England, but a powerful Continental organization was
intent upon extending it over the whole world. Mrs. Butler went to
the Continent to raise a "cry of conscience " there. It was, indeed, a
" Voice in the Wilderness," as she called the pamphlet in which she set forth
her appeal. Would that all who are still ignorant of what licensed prosti-
tution is in those countries where it has so long prevailed, might read for
themselves what she has recorded of her Continental experiences in her book,
"The New Abolitionists." It is a cruel slavery for victimized women where
the system is established, and well did she choose her title. The recruiting
traffic in young girls, which is one of the saddest phases of this infamous
business, is fitly characterized as the " White Slave Trade."
As a result of this mission of Mrs. Butler to the Continent, came " The
International Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice."
This organization, composed of men and women, is non-sectarian in religion,
non-partisan in politics. Its president is M. de Laveleye, the distinguished
writer on political economy, of Liege, Belgium ; its secretaries are Mrs.
Butler and Professor Stuart, M. P. It holds a conference annually in some one
of the fifteen countries represented in its membership \ and every three years
a congress is convened for a week's deliberation upon the hygienic, moral,
legislative, and other aspects of the problem involved. It has been my
privilege to attend, as an American delegate, two of these congresses, and
to listen to the reports of the work set forth.
We think we have much to do here in America to establish equal rights
for women in all the relations of life, but in contrast with the conditions in
Continental Europe our task seems light indeed. They have not the van-
tage-ground of years of agitation for enlarged opportunities for women
which the devoted pioneers that we delight to honor in this Council have
given us. The obstacles they have to contend with might appal less coura-
geous hearts. I bespeak for them the sympathetic interest of all American
women in their arduous struggle to defend the rights of the poor and victim-
ized of their own sex, and to elevate the tone of public morals. And I
should mention also the loyal men who, like Professor Humbert, of Switzer-
land, and others, have consecrated themselves to the cause.
Self-interest should prompt us to lend our aid. So many Americans in-
dulge in these days in foreign travel, that the customs of the Old World are
in danger of being ingrafted upon the new. Many young men take their
. Social Purity. 255
first lesson in social vice in Paris and other Continental cities, under the delu-
sion that the regulated, licensed brothel gives security from disease, and a
fatal fallacy has it proved. The unfortunate confusion of tongues, which
prevents the literature of those countries being easily accessible here, is a
great obstacle in the way of our active co-operation with them. If the
Bulletin Continental, the official organ of the Federation, were printed in
English instead of French, the knowledge of its good work could be more
easily extended.
The British branches of the Federation have done much by the circulation
of literature to spread the needed light upon their cause. Just at present
they are working zealously to expose the condition of affairs in their Crown
colonies. Though Great Britain has gained a repeal of the act's applying to
certain of its own military districts, it has a heavy responsibility to bear
for fostering impurity and legalized lust in its colonies. What must the
natives of heathen countries think of the representatives of a nation called
Christian, who provide prostitutes for their army as they would food and rai-
ment ! Alfred S. Dyer, editor of the Sentinel, of London, is making a tour
of investigation in India, and the reports he gives of the conditions there
are most revolting. They make one wish there were a thousand Ramabais
instead of one, to open pathways of independence for the women of India,
and save them from the despoiler.
We are indebted to this International Federation for sending, in 1876, a
deputation to America, to warn us against the schemes of Regulation ists here.
These delegates were the Rev. J. P. Gledstone, and the Hon. Henry J.
Wilson, now a member of Parliament. They held conferences in several of
our large cities, and in New York a branch committee was organized, of
which Mrs. Abby Hopper Gibbons is president, whose active sendees have
been needed the past twelve years, to watch and thwart the persistent efforts
that have been made to secure legalized vice in that city and elsewhere.
This committee has distributed a large amount of social purity literature, not
only of its own, but many of the special publications of the Federation.
Preceding the date of this deputation from England, licensed prostitution
was tried in the city of St. Louis for a period of about four years — i87o-'74.
The late Dr. William G. Eliot, and a band of brave women and good men,
led a vigorous agitation of resistance to it, and were finally victorious.
Dr. Eliot has left on record in a valuable pamphlet, the history of that
experiment, showing that while it lasted disease was not lessened and that
immorality increased. Kindred unsuccessful attempts were made thus early
to introduce the odious system in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cin-
cinnati, Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. But there
chanced to be those who, watchful of all laws bearing unequally upon
women, and mindful of the menace to public morals, were prompt to sound
an alarm. It is fitting in this Council to record the tribute of thanks due
256 International Council of Women.
for the services rendered in these localities, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Susan B. Anthony, Lydia Mott, Anna Dickinson, Dr. Caroline B. Wirislow,
Dr. Susan A. Edson, Phcebe W. Couzins, Virginia L. Minor, and others in
that earlier time.
Though social vice is not openly licensed in this country, there are those who
believe in the system, and we have shameful conditions of immorality which
-should be cause for grave concern. Our only safeguard is in dealing with
them radically, insisting upon an equal standard of virtue for both sexes ;
and to this end does the ultimate influence of "The International Federa-
tion for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice " tend. In England, an
outgrowth of it has been Social Purity Alliances, composed of adults of
both sexes, for general moral education, and White Cross Leagues for men
only, to pledge them to chastity movements which herald the general reform
needed.
Since the shock of the moral earthquake caused by Mr. Stead's exposures,
which made the guilty tremble on this side of the Atlantic as well, increased
attention has been given to the subject here. Statute-books have been
studied to find what measure of protection for virtue is given by law to the
girlhood of America. The revelation is appalling, and has convinced many
that it is not best to entrust to men alone the legislation for crimes which
involve so much for womanhood. Those safely sheltered in ease and luxury
may not feel so keenly the peril invoked by a law that fixes the age at which
the little girl may consent to her own ruin, at ten years ; but the mother of toil
and poverty, forced to send her daughter out to service when scarce in her
teens, often learns all too. quickly how such a statute shields the seducer and
assailant. It is the poor and the dependent that are made a prey. Since
the recent agitation for raising the age of protection for young girls began,
encouraging modifications of the law have been made in several States. But
in the majority, as in this very capital of the nation, at the present time, the
" age of consent " is still ten years. In one State, Delaware, it is seven years.
Only one State, Kansas, has raised the age to eighteen, and we should be
■content with nothing less.
In America, the danger from the schemes of the Regulationists, lessens in
proportion as light is spread upon this whole sad problem, and it is spread-
ing most hopefully. In this unfolding of woman's era, new moral forces
are being called into active service. The mother-heart of the world is find-
ing expression in many ways, and it is to be a quickening power in this ,
' ■" latest and greatest crusade of morals," which reaches the deepest root of
what we have been wont to call the " Woman Question." Our honored
pioneers, who, through persecution and ridicule, have voiced the human
right and the religious duty for woman to share jointly with man full oppdr-
tunity for the exercise of her best powers, have broken down the barriers
and prepared the way for this reform. The gathering hosts of our White
Social Purity. 257
Ribbon Army have given to us our Mrs. Butler in the leadership of Frances.
E. Willard, and are pledged to guard the homes of the nation in sobriety
and purity. White Cross societies are beginning to lay foundations for a
chaste manhood, and to train their knights of the new chivalry to protect
virtue as gallantly and sacredly as life itself. Through all these regenerating
influences we may hope to realize a consecrated fatherhood and mother-
hood, that men and women together may reverently strive to meet their
joint responsibility in. cleansing our social life from its foul stain. So —
" Cast in a diviner mold,
Let the new cycle shame the old."
Mrs. Harbert. The one minor strain which we all feel, is the absence of
so many of the grand women who have grown gray in the service. We have
an able paper from Mrs. Josephine Butler.
March, 1888.
To the International Council of Women at Washington :
Dear Ladies: Being prevented by domestic circumstances from attending
your assemblies personally, I am glad to entrust a few words of greeting to
my dear and honored friend, Mrs. Steward, who has consented to cross the
Atlantic at my earnest request, as a delegate from our Ladies' National
Association. That association was formed in the winter of 1869, having for
its definite aim the obtaining of the repeal of the acts of Parliament of
1 866-' 69 for the state regulation of vice; or, in other words, for the pro-
visioning of the army and navy (not in Great Britain alone, but in our
Indian Empire and all our colonies) with selected and superintended healthy
women. A celibate soldiery, it was said by our heathen legislators of that
day, required such a provision as urgently and as regularly as they required
daily rations.
Now, I have no reason to suppose that this special subject (always a
mournful and repellant one) will be formally brought forward in your con-
•vention, although the kindred and closely allied subject of personal and
social purity will surely be so. It would, however, be impossible, for me
either to appear at or write to your Convention in the aim of furnishing a
contribution to your deliberations, except in connection with my own life-
work, and the deep convictions which instigated that life-work, and which
have become even more and more profound as I continued in it.
The committee of our Ladies' National Association, therefore, strongly
desired that a delegate should be selected from our midst who had been
associated in that work from an early period, and such an one is Mrs. Steward,
who has been indefatigable in her labors, not only in England, but in Bel-
gium, for the saviDgof the English girls bought, stolen, and destroyed under
this diabolical system of State-protected vice in that country. There is now
a crowd of younger women who are bravely preaching the purity crusade and
doing excellent vigilance work; but there are but few of the veterans left
258 International Council of Women.
who in 1869 inaugurated the fierce contest with our government, the Houses
of Lords and Commons, the medical boards, the press, and the upper classes
generally, in order to gain the abolition of the vice-protecting laws, and to
assert the equality of the moral law for the two sexes, as well as the dignity
and sacredness of womanhood. Among those veterans were included the
names of Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Mary Somerville, Mary
Carpenter, and others. Some are gone to their rest, others are aged and
waiting for their call home. Those who remain work together still, bound
to each other by strong affection and by the memory of past suffering and
conflict shared together. Of this group Mrs. Steward is one, and I com-
mend her to your sisterly kindness and hospitality.
It may not be out of place here, in order to set forth the motives which
drove us to devote ourselves to this crusade before all others, to quote some
words which were drawn from me at a great meeting at Leeds in July, 1870.
Some of us had been long working for the " higher education of women."
A council for that end had been formed, embracing members from all the
northern parts of England. I was for three years the president of that
council. But in 1870, feeling impelled to resign, I thought it right to give
my reasons for doing so. I venture to give the words spoken on that occa-
sion : " While, therefore, I continue to regard the cause of education as
most sacred, I come to the present meeting with a saddened heart, and
I only propose to relinquish the office I now hold because I feel that God has
called me to a more painful one. All members have not the same office; all
are not called to descend to the depths of woe, to clear out moral sewers, and
to cast in their lot among wretched slave gangs, in order to help the slaves to
carry the weight of their chains, if not to break them away. This work, I
think, is mine, but there is other work not less holy and which aims not less
directly at a future emancipation ; so while I feel all the deeper gratitude to
you, my fellow-workers in this Council, for the work you are doing in the
cause of humanity, I am obliged to confess to you that, for my own part, I
fear I may not in future be able to give the needful time to this work which
it demands. I wish to leave it in abler and freer hands. It has my deepest
sympathy. It points to one of the most important of all the means by which
we hope to " undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free " and inau-
gurate a purer and sounder national life. To keep pace, however, with this
portion of the great work, one requires to have the head and heart free, and
that can not be the case with one who is called to deal with the most misera-
ble, to walk side by side, hand in hand, with the outcast, the victim of our
social sins, whom one scarcely dares to name in refined society. I am
full of hope for the education cause and for the anti-slavery cause in which
we are engaged. Nevertheless, my very soul grows faint before the facts of
1870, and though that faintness of soul may complete one's fitness to be a
fellow-sufferer with the slave, it does not increase one's capacity for a work
which requires intellectual energy."
Social Purity. 25J>
It is impossible, and would not be right, that I should trouble you with
a report of the arduous work which our Women's Abolitionist Society-
accomplished between 1869 and 1874. Suffice it to say that we shook the
government and aroused the whole nation. Mountains were removed by the
energy imparted by a gigantic faith.
In 1874a " new departure " was inaugurated. The battle was carried across
the channel to France — where, under the First Napoleon, this abominable
and impure tyranny had first been instituted in the end of the eighteenth
century — to Italy, to Switzerland, to Germany, and to the Netherlands. It
spread afterwards to Spain, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Hungary, and
Sweden and Norway. We now have friends in Russia, but no association is
yet formed there.
In the first report of the Continental work the movement was , thus-
described by our financial secretary, Professor . Stuart, M. P.: "It was
indeed a wise intuition which led the women of England to carry into
its original strongholds the campaign against the system of regulated vice,,
against whose encroachments we are contending in this country. Not only
have we seen, during the year of work just concluded, refuges for the fallen
established throughout many cities of Europe, and men and women of
many languages joining to call for and work for the abolition of regu-
lated prostitution, and to aim through that at the abolition finally of pros-
titution itself, but we have seen whole cities shaken as it were with the
wind of a new revival, recognizing the crime that they have committed
before God, in regulating and licensing the destruction of his image ; we have
seen through the length and breadth of nations, societies actively working
in a cause which had before lain dormant, and we have seen the whole
great nation of Italy, called as it were by the voice of God, through his
poor and weak servants, recognizing that virtue and purity alone can be the
basis of its future greatness."
In a brief time we had won the public adhesion to our cause of
many of the most distinguished persons on the Continent, among whom
we counted Joseph Mazzini and Garibaldi, in Italy ; Jules Favre, Jules
Simon, and Victor Hugo, in France; the Count Agenor de Gasparin
and the Countess de Gasparin, of Geneva; Baron de Bunsen and Count
Ungern Sternberg, in Germany ; M. Emile de Laveleye, the well-known
writer and economist, of Belgium, and many others. But it is not
so much to the adhesion of the great men that we hold, as to the
active concurrence of the thousands of women on the Continent of Eu-
rope, who have been awakened on this question and who have formed
numerous and ever-increasing associations for working out our aims,
more especially in Switzerland, Holland, France, and the Scandinavian
peninsula. Our Continental secretary, M. Humbert, writing on this subject
after fourteen years' experience, says : " Happy are those nations in which
260 International Council of Women.
women themselves have taken the initiative in this great movement, for in
such cases it will never die, whereas in countries where the work is left
entirely to men, although some reforms may be achieved, the movement
never possesses the same life."
This brings me to speak of our work in the Colonies and in India. It is
in allusion to this new expansion that M. Humbert writes the letter just
quoted. He continues : " How are we to proceed successfully for the eman-
cipation of women from the hateful thraldom imposed on them by the civili-
zation of conquering races (the thraldom of compulsory and state regulated
prostitution), among Buddhists, Brahmins, Mahometans, or Pagans, where
the fate of women, in this world at least, depends absolutely on the will of
man, their master. This is a difficult question to answer. We see occasion-
ally a spark kindled among those nations, but the light is short lived, and it
requires to be continually rekindled."
In spite of these difficulties, however, we are pushing forward our work in
Egypt and in the French colonies of North Africa, as well as in other direc-
tions. We believe that the question is coming rapidly to the front in India.
The present mission of Mr. Dyer to India, is producing an awakening there
that will be productive of very decided results, from a parliamentary and
governmental pomt of view. We are more especially concerned with the
awakening of the women of India on the subject of this imperially-imposed
degradation of their race, and to kindred questions vitally concerning
womanhood. On this side we are full of hope. It is affecting to see the
petitions which are now in the hands of some of our Members of Parliament
this session. These petitions are from Anglo-Indian and native women, and
many are signed in Hindoo characters. The prayer of the petition is for
relief from this degrading law. We receive also privately very touching
appeals from Indian ladies, and to these our association responds with eager
sympathy.
The following quotation from one of the replies sent from the Leeds
branch of our Abolition Society, will show you the spirit with which the
women of the world are communicating with each other on this subject :
" Do let us assure you, dear Indian friends, that we have found that, so long
as our motives are pure, no evil knowledge can hurt us. We have seen, on
the contrary, that work of this kind, undertaken in the spirit of consecration
{and in no other spirit can any one endure to continue the work), may lead
to a higher and purer knowledge of life and of the human heart ; that many
have found, as all must do sooner or later, that intellectual force alone can
not guard against the horror of this evil, and have thus been driven to seek
more spiritual means of warfare, and so have passed into a higher life. Do
be sure, dear friends, that whatever your enemies may say of you, in the invis-
ible Kingdom of Righteousness you can but be purified by this labor of love."
Social Purity. 261
Thus the women of the world are reaching out their hands to each other,,
and banding themselves together, so that when councils, rulers, and lords-
of science endeavor, by decrees, or by social tyranny, to give a continuance
to the most degrading institution which has defiled the history of the human
race, they will have the power to say: "You shall not slay us or our sis-
ters." They have struck a note for which the ages have been waiting, and
which even the church itself, in its organized ecclesiastical forms, has never
yet intoned.
There is a point on which I have sometimes thought (possibly without rea*
son) that American women feel less strongly than we do. I allude to the
physical treatment, forcibly imposed, the personal outrage on women, which
lies at the root of the practical working of the whole system of the state
regulation of vice. You have happily not had in America the practical
experience which we, in the Old World, have had of the degrading effects of
this outrage. It is the final and most complete expression of the foul idea of
woman as a chattel, a slave, an instrument, a mere vassal, officially dedicated
to the vilest uses.
At our last International Congress, held at Lausanne, September, 1887,
some of our less-instructed followers had been occupying too much of our
time in an attempt to defend, up to a certain point, the State's action in tyran-
nizing over women. Thinking that the moment had come for a decided
word on the part of women themselves, I gave utterance to the thoughts
which were in my mind, and in doing so I proclaimed, in the name of all
women, that whatever subtlety of argument might weigh with certain doctors,
legislators, etc., this was nothing to us, and that we women solemnly declared
again the principle of our own dignity, and our determination never to
sanction the enslavement of any woman by the outrage perpetrated under
this system. At the close of my few words Mme. de Morsier, of Paris, rose,,
and with uplifted hand asked earnestly that every woman present who agreed
with and re-echoed from the depths of her heart, the words of Mrs. Butler,
should stand up. The large hall was crowded with women as well as men.
The men continued sitting, but every woman rose, and, with the right hand
uplifted high, followed the action of Mme. de Morsier and Mme. de Gingins,
responding to the solemn words uttered by her : " In the name of God,
Amen." There was a significant silence for a few moments. Some of the gen-
tlemen were surprised, most were deeply moved, and to every woman present,.
I feel convinced, it was a ratification of our principles never to be forgotten.
The sound of it went far abroad beyond the mere hall of meeting itself. I
mention this incident merely as an illustration of the spirit of our women, in
their jealous guardianship of the sacredness of womanhood even in the per-
sons of the most degraded of their sisters. I myself believe this spirit to be
thoroughly in accord with that of our Master, Christ.
As an inevitable and necessary accompaniment of the establishment of
262 International Council of Women.
licensed houses of ill-fame under government patronage all over the world,
there exists, as you all know, tne most extensive slave traffic in the interest
of vice. This fact has become so fully acknowledged during the last few
years as to have given rise to that admirable and much-needed society, the
''International Association of Friends of Girls," originating in Switzerland
and now spreading all over and far beyond Europe. That society has been
greatly strengthened in England since the congress held in London in 1886;
and this fact is brought home to us by the reassuring sight at various railway
^stations and landing places, of the warnings and friendly placards so dili-
gently distributed and put up by the English branch of the society, inform-
ing all girls and women of where they may find friends, and of what dangers
they must beware. Our Federation has collected carefully many facts and
statistics concerning this world-wide slave traffic.
People in Europe speak with indignation of the traffic in negroes. It
would be just as well if they would open their eyes to what is going on much
nearer, throughout the whole of Europe, especially in Germany and Austria,
where the exportation of white slaves is carried on on a large scale. A terrible
picture is presented to us of the enforced movement to and fro upon the face
of the earth, of these youthful victims of human cruelty. Numbers are em-
barked at Hamburg, whose destination is South America, Bahia, and Rio de
Janeiro. The greater number are probably engaged for Montevideo and
Buenos Ayres; others are sent by the Straits of Magellan to Valparaiso.
Other cargoes are sent to North America, some being forwarded through
England, others direct. The competition which the traders meet with when
they land, sometimes constrains them to go further ahead ; they are found,
therefore, descending the Mississippi with their cargoes, to New Orleans and
Texas. Others are taken on to California.
In the market of California they are sorted, and thence taken to provision
the different localities on the coast, as far as Panama. Others are sent from
the New Orleans markets to Cuba, the Antilles, and Mexico. Others are
taken from Bohemia, Germany, and Switzerland across the Alps to Italy,
and thence further south to Alexandria and Suez, and eastward to Bombay,
Calcutta, Singapore, Hong-Kong, and Shanghai. The Russian official houses
of vice draw their slaves in a great measure from eastern Prussia, Pomerania,
and Poland. The most important Russian station is Riga j it is there that
the traders of St. Petersburg and Moscow sort and get ready their cargoes for
Nijni-Novgorod, and from this latter place cargoes are sent on to the more
distant towns of Siberia. At Tschita a young German was found who had
been sold and resold in this manner.
You in America are happily free from the state regulation of vice; but,
undoubtedly, there is an extensive traffic in white slaves in your midst, and
a constant importation to your shores of poor foreigners, who are destined
to moral and spiritual destruction. I trust you will, from your Congress,
Social Parity. 263
put out strong hands for the abolition of this traffic. It may be that I am
writing to some who have been accustomed to think of the poor outcasts of
society as beings different from others, in some way tainted from their birth;
creatures apart, without the tenderness and capacities for good possessed by
your own cherished daughters. You may have imagined them to be for the
most part reckless and willful sinners, or, if in the first instance betrayed or
forced into sin, now, at least, so utterly destroyed and corrupted as to have
become something unmentionable in polite society. Now, all who have had
a practical acquaintance with the lives of poor and tempted women, know
how mistaken is such a judgment, how cruelly false in most cases. But,
granting for the moment that women who have fallen from virtue have
become so degraded as to be repulsive or uninteresting to you, what have
you to say concerning outraged children ? And thousands of these are but
children in age and in knowledge.
Who will dare to say that any child is determinedly, willfully wicked and
degraded; that any child in the world is further from God's kingdom than
we grown-up people are, however virtuous we may be? Nay, but " of such
is the Kingdom of Heaven." One who never errs has said it. We are not
told that He selected an exceptionally pure and holy child when He set a
little child in the midst of the multitude and said that, except we become
as such a little child we shall in nowise enter the Kingdom of Heaven;
verily, "their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in
Heaven ; " and woe be to that man, to that nation, to those mothers of men
and of nations, who, seeing that little child fallen among thieves, robbed,
wounded, murdered, dying, shall calmly pass by on the other side ! A day
is coming in which it will not avail any of us to say we knew it not ; for now
we know it. The means of knowing it and the means of helping to redress
this wrong are within our reach, at our very hand. I cherish the hope and
the belief that the time is at hand when all women who are indeed at heart
mothers and worthy of the name, will give up the chilling reserve which
seems too much like acquiescence in evil, and will come forward to .the res-
cue, not only for the sake of the innocent and betrayed, but for the sake of
their sons and of our national life.
This letter is sent forthwith the earnest prayer that, while pardoning the im-
perfections of my poor appeal, God would make use of it, to fan the holy
and purifying fire which, I feel sure, is already kindled in your hearts. Whe
I kneel in my chamber to plead for the deliverance of these little ones for
whom Christ died, I seem to see the childish faces gathering in crowds
around me, filling the space on every side — the faces of the slaughtered dead
as well as of the living. These victims, voiceless and unable to plead their
own cause, seem to make their ceaseless, mute appeal from their scattered,
unknown graves, and from out those dark habitations of cruelty where they
are now helplessly imprisoned. But their weeping has been heard in Heaven,
264 International Council of Women.
and judgment is at hand. Of their destroyers it may be said: " They mur-
der the fatherless, yet they say the Lord shall not see it." Of you, O friends,
let it be said, and let the Savior himself speak the words: "Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me."
I am yours in the service of God and of humanity,
Josephine E. Butler.
Mrs. Harbert. It is with great pleasure I present to you Mrs. Laura
Ormiston Chant, delegate from the Edinburgh Branch of the Federation for
Repeal of State Regulation of Vice, whose chief officers are Jennie M.
Wellstood, Eliza Wigham, and Elizabeth Pease Nichol.
Mrs. Chant. My sisters, do you know what you represent this morning ?
You represent all the centuries of womanhood crowded here under the roof
of this building, who, from terrible persecution and shame and silence, have
protested against the double standard of morals for men and women. There
isn*t one single Avoman in this great multitude who is not a living protest
before Almighty God, that while life is given to us to breathe, to speak, with
power to touch each other, we will none of us have part or lot in that which
has been the curse of the world and the ruin of dynasties. Whether you
know it or not, you are a protest against the pitiful figure of the girl, three
hundred years ago, as she crept through the cholera-stricken streets of Naples,
with a yellow handkerchief around her neck to mark that she was at the lib-
erty of every man who chose to violate the solemn bond of sex ; compelled
by the government, backed by the law made by man. There was not a
single outcast woman of Naples who was not to be known by a broad, yellow
handkerchief which she wore around her neck.
You are a protest against the poor woman in the tribe of the Vandals when
they made war on the Goths, when she was obliged to receive three hundred
lashes because she was a woman of light conduct; but it was not because she
was a woman of light conduct that she received them, but because she was
found out in her light conduct — in her sin, as it was deemed by the superior
virtue of the men who administered the lashes upon her shoulders; and she
threw herself down upon her knees and cried with a language which I have
not heard, but which I understand : "Give him half; give him half.".
You are a protest against the women who have been walking, and I shame
to say it, through the main towns in England, in fear, at every turn in the
street, of having a hand laid on their shoulder by a man and being walked
off, either to the lock-up or that other terrible torture chamber. You are a
protest against the girl of fifteen or sixteen who wa" walking through the
streets of Dover, when two stalwart men walked up behind her — she was an
innocent, bright looking girl, but they had the power — and if this girl was
of a light life they had the right to do this very thing, to take her and lock
her up on the charge of light life ;' and when the hunted girl had found
that there was no refuge for her in human justice, that humauity had no
Social Purity. 265
help for her, she preferred the great waves of the sea, and threw herself over
the dock ; and when these two men, guardians of law and order, saw the
struggling girl in the water, they said it was all right and went away.
But a boatman saw her, went to her, and took her in his boat and landed
her. And when the two men saw that she was rescued, they hurried to the
place, and took the girl again and brought her before the magistrate on the
charge of suicMe ; and the magistrate counselled her and warned her, and it
was only at very great expense that we got a lawyer down from London to
prove, as no man can prove, that she had not outraged her own purity, but
was supporting her old father in working as a charwoman at eighteen pence a
day.
You have heard how we in England got those laws repealed. It was a
gala day in England that you can hardly imagine when, at Westminster, the
votes were taken and we found we had achieved such an unparalleled victory.
I can hardly speak of it to-day, for 1 have not done thrilling with what I felt
when a telegram came to me from a Member of Parliament :" " Thank God,
the victory is ours." After that came the terrible story in the Pall Mall
Gazette, and then I think the whole world was divided into two great camps,
and the one camp was composed of those who said, " Never mind what is
done, so long as it isn't spoken about," and the other camp said, "If these
things are done, they shall be spoken about until they are swept away."
And we had the most magnificent demonstration in Hyde Park that can be
conceived. There could not have been less than a hundred thousand peo-
ple at it, and. in all probability there were a hundred and fifty thousand.
And the news of it only reached the United States in fragments ; the reason
of it was this- — that there was a huge conspiracy on the part of the London
press not only to write it down, but to ignore it altogether.
One paper said there might have been five thousand people in Hyde Park
that afternoon, but only fifteen hundred of them had come to witness the
demonstration, and we said it seemed as if, in trying to teach the world
morality, we should first have to try to teach our men to count. That demon-
stration meant that at last the silence was broken and the spirit of God had
moved upon this great sea of human passion. I have been twenty-five years
engaged in behalf of my own sex, and my hair is not gray yet, and I can say
that the marvelous change in the character of our work, not only the demon-
strations in Hyde Park, but the awakening of public conscience, have been,
in great part, due to the brave pen of Mr. Stead. In the early days it was
not an uncommon thing for me to address three or four hundred women,
and to have every one of them come with a veil on her face. I have
sometimes laughed, even when I have been in the midst of a solemn speech,
to see the veils gradually lifted up and put under the chairs. We do not
have veiled ladies now, and we do not find if difficult to get the largest meet-
ings we ever have in England, on the matter of social purity.
18
266 International Council of Women.
We had a meeting recently at Colston Hall in Bristol, which seats 5,000,
and that night it had to hold 6,000, and some of the speakers rode to the hall
in the mayor's carriage. They made a civic thing of it, which, I assure you,
is an honor in England — to go to a purity meeting in the mayor's carriage.
All over the country we are spreading the organizations which were formed
right on the face of Mr. Stead's terrible articles in the Pall Mall Gazette.
None of us who have been doing the rescue-work doubted the absolute accu-
racy of those articles. I myself would have staked my reputation upon their
truth, because I know. But even supposing we had not known that, we had
only to turn to the Blue Book, which had been published by and received the
sanction of the House of Lords ten years before that, to show that a traffic
more terrible than any Mr. Stead ever laid bare in his articles, had been
known and had been enrolled in the statute-books of the nation. I possess
a copy of this Blue Book, and when anybody tells me that this is an exag-
geration, I say, " If you have the courage to stand by your convictions,
you shall sit down in my writing-room and read the most agonizing review
that ever came to the world at the hands of men, some of whom would have
given all their wealth not to indorse the truth of the statements, because they
were concerned. We are forming a net-work for the carrying out of the law
that was made on the face of that assertion. We would carry it out so that
we would no longer have the age of twelve, as a limit at which our children
could be protected.
Let me give you a sample of how we do our work. We had in one place
a Member of Parliament so dastardly that he sat in his place in our House
of Commons and said that, for his part, he would like to have the age lower.
Didn't he speak to eager ears in that ladies' gallery ! And one of them went
down to the place he represented and the good women there got meetings
together and we made the place so hot for him that he didn't dare to come
before the people. There is nothing like bringing the great fire of passion-
ate and reverent love, to burn up this chaff that is hiding the wheat from the
world.
Then we formed these organizations because the trade was going on and
our law did not meet the needs of the transportation of these girls out to New
York, out to Canada, out to Madras and Bombay and Antwerp and St.
Petersburg. There were thousands being taken under the guise of domestic
service. Briefly, I will tell you this — that at our principal railway-stations
in London and the ports of England to-day, we have ladies of high char-
acter and good social position, who walk these stations and walk those ports
from morning to night, in turn, that they may watch the outgoing of passen-
gers to the ships. I myself have done that work, so I know what I am talk-
ing about. It has been a passionate desire of mine that that work should be
done, long before we threw it into the hands of the Travelers' Aid Associa-
tion, under the auspices of the Young Woman's Christian Association and
our National Vigilance Association.
Social Purity. 267'
I will just give you one instance. One day, three years ago, I went to
Charing Cross, which is the station for Folkestone, and from Folkestone
they go to the Continent; and I sat in the waiting-room and saw a most
miserable hag of a woman with a poor, wretchedly-appearing, crying girl.
I did not know then the state of this trade, and I said to her, " Dear,
what are you crying for? " And the girl didn't answer me, and I thought
she might be deaf. Then the old hag came up and shook her fist in my face
and said, " How dare you speak to that girl ? " I felt very uncomfortable.
I knew there was some terrible wrong there ; so I went up to a policeman
and spoke to him, not as a policeman, but as a man who knew about such
things, and I said : " Will you see about that? There is something wrong."
" Oh," said he, " lots of them go over to the Continent — lots of them. It
is just their own doing, and they like to go." Then there was no law to
touch it — not a single power to stop that girl. Three years after the law was
on our side.
I was in Charing Cross station again last year, and there sat in the wait-
ing-room that same old hag, with another miserable girl. Now I had the
law on my side, and I went up to the girl and said : " Dear, where are you
going ? " She said : "Iara going to service in Boulogne." I said : "Are
you sure you are ? To whom are you going ? " She said : "I looked out
for a situation at my home in Essex, and the clergyman's wife gave me the
newspaper and we read the advertisement saying that girls were wanted for
the refreshment bar, and good wages given and great care taken, and a com-
fortable home, and I am going." And I said : "No; you are not." And
I went to our Vigilance Council, of which I am a member, and I made one
of the lawyers, who is a member of it, go out with me. We went back to
the station and we telegraphed to our association, and said: "Stop an
elderly woman with a girl, for we are making inquiries." I had got from
the girl the address of the clergyman's wife in Essex. I telegraphed:
" Have you any knowledge of where this girl is going? Do you personally
know them ? " She telegraphed : " No ; we have only written references."
And we telegraphed again, and it was just half an hour before the boat
started from Folkestone, "Stop that woman and give her into custody."'
And we did, and the woman turned out to be a procuress of a great many-
years' standing ; and we think we have stopped, at any rate, a branch of this-
most infamous trade. And we kept that girl at her home in Essex and
showed her how it was better to earn her own living at small wages in En-
gland, under those who knew her, than much larger wages, where every
penny made, meant a nail in the coffin of her happiness, her purity, and
her love.
We have dens of infamy in our London ; I don't know about your Wash-
ington. I walked through your streets at twelve, half-past twelve, at one,
half-past one, this morning, and I saw a spectacle so amazing that I tell you
it that you may feel it. I was blank and dumb this morning, in that hour
and a half, when I walked the streets and saw your beautiful Capitol, standing
268 International Council of Women.
-white against the sky in the moonlight, and in all this time I met not one
single girl or woman. In London I should have met a tribe of them, painted,
bejewelled, brazen, talking with drunken men, themselves half drunken,
imaking their bargains of shame at the corner of every street.- I have felt,
•" Oh, dear new country, you have one advantage over our England, at any
rate you have not this sinful traffic going on in your streets at night." All
this has come to us from the centuries of monastic rule and feudalism, and it
has made such a stain on our world and our life that only the waves of ob-
livion can sweep it away. But I do pray you women here, as you value your
country and the future, don't let one single chink of the door be opened
toward the regulation of this horrible wrong. It will be your ruin, as I
believe it was the ruin of Greece and Rome, and Carthage and ancient
Egypt.
Years ago I did the same walking in Antwerp, and there again it was a
clear moonlight night ; and as in my walk I stood outside a house that was
lighted, I saw there two policemen with swords. Up to the door there
came a cab and I waited, and out of that house there came a shawled
figure, as of some one who was very ill. She passed me on the pavement,
and a policeman took each side of her and bundled her roughly into the cab,
and she groaned, and the only sigh that I shall hear from that sister of
mine on this side of Jordan, was the one cry of pain that has gone up from
the women all over the world. Oh, God ! she was compelled to be in that
house, with those policemen there in the name of the state to keep her fast
to her sin for those who had bought her ; and if she refused at the bidding of
her masters to do the thing for which they bought her, no matter how
loathsome her companion, those policemen were to take her — the only time
she goes out — before a magistrate to be sentenced for two or three months'
hard labor for refusing to submit to the terrible outrage ! And there came a
poor woman and said to me in German : " Oh, madam, from the time they
go in they never leave, except to go to the hospital or the graveyard. The
hospital first and the graveyard after." And this, my sister, was going to
her death !
Then while you ask every one here to overcome this, it is of no use ; all our
religion, all our science is in vain, while underneath us there is this corroding
cancer of unequal standards for men and women.- I will, tell you what we
are doing. We are forming associations for the protection of women, so
that nowhere shall any girl be unprotected. And out of this is coming a
higher and better education. It is very well to take up work out of pity, but
if you only take it up for that, your work is sure to be a failure. 'You may
begin by pity, as I did, but you must learn to grasp principles and to work
on those principles. We have had long years of rescue-work in our England,
d6ne by. very good ladies, who, I hope, will excuse me for saying it, had not
an idea of a principle and drew their dresses around them, away from woman
Social Purity. 269
kind, and they said, piously: "We thank thee, God, that we are not as
other women are." And what have women to do with politics? It has
been a splendid education for women' to learn what politics have to do with
them. Some of us, myself included, were possessed of that strong cowardice
which shrinks so much from the publicity of this work. I will tell you what
made me come to it; it was being a mother; just as a lioness and not the
lion stands out to protect her cubs, so I realized it was the mother who should
stand out to protect her children far more than the father. When I looked
at those little girls of mine, I realized that I was responsible for their exist-
ence; I realized that it was I who had molded them spiritually and physi-
cally ; I realized with pride that it was I who. said when they should come
and how often. I felt that my responsibility was far higher even than my
husband's, in taking a public part in the protection of all other girls, and
that it is much better to speak about evil while it exists, than to keep
silence.
I have the great honor of having been one to put the new criminal law
into force, and it was. in this wise: We have done years of work, and
have gone into bad houses to get poor little girls out of them. We have
gone in peril of our lives, but I stand unmaimed and happy before you this
morning. I do not understand being afraid. We went into these houses,
and if the little girl was over twelve we could not get her out. Then came
the criminal law bill. Just then I got an agonized letter from a poor man
down in the country, saying: "My little girl of fifteen went up to service,
and her mother and I are very, very poor, and can not go to her and see
what is up with her, for she writes such queer letters." Oh, mothers, I hope
never in all your lives will you receive such letters from your children.
This little girl of fifteen writes : " I am in such a nice place; they are so
kind to me ; they have me down in the drawing-room every night, and
one of the gentlemen here has promised me a gold watch and chain;"
and that girl had gone there as a scullery maid. And then another dread-
ful letter: That such a fine gentleman, with a gold chain and fine clothes
and a moustache, had asked her to go home and live with him, as he
wants a little girl ; he has lost his. Poor little child ! And the agonized
father wrote: " She is in the very jaws of death." And in our society we
talked about this, and they said to me: " This child should be taken from
this place at once; " and I said, How? They said somebody must do it.
And I savid,~Who ? And they said, You. And I took the train and went down
to the country and came to a beautiful place, with a fine mansion, surrounded
with trees and lawns and a carriage-drive around it, and it seemed ajterrible
thing to go up to that door, as if it were a bad house, as it was.
Those are the bad houses in our country ; they are far more dangerous
than those in the miserable alleys of London. When I got part of. the
way up the carriage-drive there was a notice, "Beware of the dogs; they
270 International Council of Women.
are running about the grounds and are very savage." Then I knew it
was no English gentleman's house. Nowhere in England are such notices
as that in gentlemen's places. I went to the door, and, oh, thank God!
the very person who opened the door was that little girl, with dark, sweet
eyes, like my own little girl's, and I said to her, " Emma, my child, I have
come to take you out of this place." And the girl looked sulky and didn't
want to go, so I said, " Run down the carriage-drive, and in that cab your
sister sits, with a letter from your father." I thought if she saw her father's
letter the girl wouldn't be able to stand out then. And while she was gone
I took stock of that dreadful house and its spring doors and locks, and
everything for making it easy for anybody to get in, and everything making
it impossible for anybody to get out. I went into the drawing-room, at the
invitation of the hostess, and I kept my boot inside the lintel, so if they
slammed that door on me it would crush my foot first, and I had to stand
a battle of an hour, in the name of the law, for this little child. I had no
ordinary enemy to deal with. I had a woman with a face so cruel that if I
flinched or faltered for one moment, I think my life would have paid the
price. But I was calm and cool, and behind me was God, and I had no
need to be afraid. I took the child out, and put the law in force, and we
got that house closed and its infamous trade stopped.
But we are educating our people. We have meetings in the afternoon,
of women alone, and mixed meetings in the evening. Although I have
addressed meetings of men alone, I greatly prefer mixed audiences, as I
am afraid that men and women will-lose sight of the fact that they are equally
responsible.
We have to enter, too, into the question of housing the poor, and we see
that it is almost impossible to bring up moral and decent girls and boys,
where father and mother and seven, eight, or nine children are herded
together in one room in the close contact and friction of every-day life.
But there are ladies like Miss Steer in the East End of London, who are
solving this problem, which men deem impossible. There was a house down
by the London dock : it was a place so terrible that when the police spoke of
it in the courts they called it the "Bridge of Sighs," because of the girls
who committed suicide there. And Miss Steer, with some other ladies, went
and bought that house and made it a Bridge of Hope, and now it is a hope
for all the poor women and girls there.
One more story. It came to my ears when I was a sister nursing in the
East End of London. There came to my ward a mother, of between six-
teen and seventeen, very young, with a terrible hurt on the side of her head,
and the cause of it was that she had thrown herself and her baby off London
Bridge. She had been 'ruined by her lover in a Berkshire town, and the
only place for the poor, agonized, expectant mother to go to was the work-
house, and they don't treat such women very kindly there;, and when she
Social Purity. 271
came out she had to go before a board of guardians, all men, with her baby-
in her arms, and she was censured by those men and cautioned not to repeat
her offense. If half of the board of guardians had been women, I think the
man would have been standing there to have been censured for his part ; and
the girl cried so bitterly that one of the guardians said : "Stop ; let her go
out," and he followed her out and gave her a shilling, and said: "Lassie,
don't cry ; you won't mind when you come back again." The girl walked
all the way up to London, and was taken up by a policeman as a vagrant,
and at last, in her agony, she had pitched herself over the bridge. And
outside that hospital, day after day, was a policeman waiting to take that girl
in custody, to be charged and tried for the murder of her baby, and either
hung or sent to prison for ten or fifteen years. I was sitting by her, giving
her loving tenderness and counsel, and between two and three o'clock in the
morning I had said to her our God would be with her in her prison cell,
and would give her work to do and comfort her as never man had, and I
told her of the motherhood of God ; I told her how God was mother and
father, and how men had forgotten it ; and her face grew radiant, and when
I had given her a spoonful of arrowroot she raised herself up, and said:
" Sister, sister, you have been kind to me, at least. God bless you; good-
night; " and she fell back on her pillow, dead.
I want you to go away this morning and vow to God upon your knees,
vow to the best part of yourself, that you will not only listen and cheer and
applaud, but throw into form your convictions, and let us have upon this
earth a harmonious, glorious band of women everywhere, who will bring in
the golden day when the sorrow and sin of the sexual relationship shall be no
more, and home shall be home indeed.
Miss Anthony. Permit me to read you a poem by Mrs. Chant, a poem
of greeting to this Council. It was printed and five hundred copies sent
over to us by that beautiful and noblewoman, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren,
of Edinburgh.
" FROM ENGLAND TO AMERICA."
Clasp hands, O friends, across the broad Atlantic !
Touch ours with yours, athwart the mighty sea !
So that we feel the thrilling of your pulses
Stirring our own to cordial sympathy.
What though the clamor of uncounted billows
Racks the resounding air from shore to shore,
/ . Waiting, we listen for the tender echoes
Rising above them, ever more and more.
Echoes of prayers, from lips of kneeling women,
Echoes of songs, that chant of what shall be
In the glad day when justice, truth, and freedom,
Welcome the universal jubilee.
We in our little island, for our thousands,
Fight the brave fight that can not know defeat ;
You in your larger country, for your millions,
Tread the long march that never can retreat.
272 International Council of Women.
We too, like you, are passing from the portal
Of the dull prison of our womanhood,
Into the glorious sunshine of the future,
Into the free, pure air of equal good.
Over the mountain rising high before us,
Dark with the gloomy mists of prejudice,
Lies the long road that leads to light supernal,
Stony and steep, past crag and precipice.
Reach out your hands, O sisters, o'er the ocean,
Union is strength ; ours we to you extend,
So that with clasp of love, and highest courage,
We may press on together to the end.
Mrs. Harbert. I now have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Caroline M.
S. Frazar, delegate of the Moral Education Society of Boston.
Mrs. Frazar. The Boston Moral Education Association was organized
in 1873, with Mrs. Caroline M. Severance as President, and as the work
unfolded many have been enrolled, until now we have thirty-seven members*
with Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, as President, whose varied interests in philan-
thropy have eminently fitted her to meet the issues that from time to time are
presented for deliberation and action. We have endeavored to deepen the
conviction of those who feel that personal righteousness is the bulwark of a
nation's strength, and to arouse the consciences of all others who are only
too willing to condone any offense which is not penal. We distribute leaflets
and tracts, make personal appeals, and in many other ways endeavor to im-
press the women of the less-favored walks of life with a sense of the duties
they owe to their children. With the limited means of a membership fee,
we make yearly contributions for suppression of legislation on the social-evil
acts, and for seven years a committee of our ladies have appea.ed to gov-
ernors, mayors, legislators, police commissioners, that matrons be appointed
in station-houses. These efforts have been attended with discouragements
too well known by those pioneers in this work. More recently, by the united
efforts of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Suffragists, the
Industrial and Educational Union, and others, we have succeeded, and a State
law has been enacted whereby every city in our Commonwealth, numbering
30,000 and upward, may have police matrons. To-day we have a house of
detention in process of equipment, and our police wagon has done service.
The question naturally arose, Where are the women to fill these positions
as matrons? And, to our surprise, the number of applicants has enabled us
to have a choice; therefore, a committee of twenty ladies, chosen from the
various organizations represented in this work, has been appointed to examine
into the fitness of the applicants for these arduous duties.
Last year we contributed to the Travelers' Friendly Aid Association. The
services of a most estimable woman were secured, and we hope in time this
enterprise will be extended over the country wherever a railroad line is in
operation.
Mrs. Harbert. It is not necessary for me to introduce to this audience
Social Purity. 273
Dr. Caroline B. Winslow, bat it is my pleasure to greet her upon this plat-
form as President of the Moral Education Society of the District of Colum-
bia, and editor of The Alpha.
THE STARTING POINT.
Dr. Winslow. The human race is the latest evolution and the crowning
point in the order of creation ; with an organization most complex and per-
fect, while possessing rudimentary traces of all lower orders of life, we are
endowed with a near kinship to Jehovah by the gift of reason, and the power
to discriminate and to choose between good and evil ; and our capacity for
growth is without limit, even to the attainment of Godlike attributes. We
are slowly emerging from a period of childhood — an age of impulse, passion,
and appetite — and nearing maturity, where wisdom should guide and knowl-
edge illumine the pathway of life.
As men and women we should be ashamed to cry for toys or sweets with
which to gratify our gustatory relish. When we reach our majority in men-
tal and moral growth, we shall be equally ashamed of our greed for gain, our
lusts of the flesh, our drunkenness, and gluttony. We shall see more clearly
that the important point to make is in the beginning of each new life ; that
each child to be born, starts right, with its dower of will and harmonized
forces, lest we be covered with confusion at the inherited imperfections of
offspring. By reason and analogy the laws of transmission, heredity, and
pre-natal influence, confirm the fact that children are born by our own voli-
tion, begotten in our own image and after our own likeness.
Fathers and mothers have the power to produce a higher type, or at least
an improved type, of humanity with each generation. We can no longer
take refuge under the plea of ignorance, for these facts are so generally
known that even children hold in their hearts and on their lips blessings or
maledictions for their progenitors. To know to what extent this is true, one
has only to place one's self in the attitude of a social reformer to become
the confidante of many sufferers.
My correspondence the past fifteen years,, has opened to my knowledge the
depth of horrors humanity can endure and exist. The awful maledictions
they engender, make one shudder to contemplate. These confidences make
such painful appeals for help and sympathy. I have a package of letters
from a young man of talent, good education, and a strong desire to live a
pure and useful life. In boyhood he ignorantly ruined his health, and, when
he resolved to rise above his depressed condition, his own folly, his hered-
ity, and environment weighed him down like an incubus.,
His appeals are most touching. He says, " If you can not help me, what
am I to do? My mother cursed me with illegitimacy and hereditary insan-
ity. I have left only the alternative of suicide or the mad-house. What an
awful charge against the memory of a mother — an inheritance of lust, in-
sanity, and suicide !"
274 International Council of Women.
Is there a mother within the sound of my voice that would not rather the
rocks should fall and hide her than bear such a reproach from the blighted
life of her child ?
In the associations represented in this International Council, all have
been organized with more or less wisdom. Each has achieved a measure
of success, yet none has been wholly successful. But how soon each
society reaches its limitations and halts before what seem to be impass-
able barriers ! How many, inspired with hope and enthusiasm, have, with
spent force, become conscious of having accomplished but little good, with a
great outlay of effort and treasure !
In early life I had many such ventures. I know them well. I did not
reach down to the bottom fact of human irregularities and weaknesses. I
did not begin at the beginning and " start right." Many of you may have
had a similar experience. ' One of the original Ohio temperance crusaders
told me, that after ten years of prayer and the most strenuous effort, the soci-
ety to which she belonged had reformed just enough drunkards to show that
some could be saved, but the number was exceedingly small and the increase
of drunkenness enormous.
A similar experience is the result of what is called " rescue-work."
While all wrong-doers, all weak and sinful ones, should receive a helping
hand, and be given opportunities to rise higher, let us cease this surface
work of patching and reforming and look deeper into the origin of evil.
Let us spend the best of our strength in preventing vice and suffering. The
future of our race lies in your hands, Oh, wqman! it is for you to mould
the new life into forms of vigor and grace. This can be done by self-puri-
fication, high thinking, and upright living. The laws of transmission are
not difficult to understand or obey. We possess the legacies of past ages,
the developments of modern science, and the increase of mental and spir-
itual force, for aids. It is very possible to utilize these acquisitions,* and with
a little common sense, apply them to the most momentous, and by far the
most important, act of life — -the begetting and creating of new forms of
intelligence. You hold the power to cast each new conception in angelic
mould as nearly as self-culture and self-discipline can make yourselves angelic.
Children thus born are only blessings. Iniafter-life they wrestle successfully
with temptations. They do not anticipate insanity or suicide, nor curse
their existence or the memory of their parents. So it becomes of the first
importance, that you strive to make the " starting point " of each child's life
harmonious and beautiful — beginning its education and discipline while you
have complete control of its existence — endowing it with physical and men-
tal strength — preparing it to be well born.
Marriage is called a sacred institution. I agree it should be sacred and
holy, but is it? If so, why are the fruits of marriage so defective? Why
are the children of religious, intelligent citizens, often reckless and unprin-
Social Purity. 275
cipled persons? The records of our free lodging-houses, almshouses, police
stations, jails, and penitentiaries have on their list the names of descendants
of our best citizens — persons that have received good education, with moral
and religious instruction. They are often members of the liberal profes-
sions— doctors, lawyers, ministers, artists, professors, and military men.
Many of our poor, debased sisterhood are religiously educated. They are
familiar with Sunday-school hymns and church catechisms, showing they
sprang from apparently well-regulated families. Why, then, are they leading
such shameful liv^es ? May it not be because of the habitual violation of the
laws of chastity and continence within the pale of marriage, putting that
which is sacred and holy to, unclean uses ? It is the testimony of Dr.
Sawyer, as well as the keepers of brothels and houses of assignation, that
these dens of infamy do not look for their support from young and unmarried
men, but from men that have sworn before God allegiance to one woman.
These men are often fathers as well as husbands.
The United States census of 1880 presents this appalling summary: In
the ten years since the census of 1870 the population of our country had
increased 30 per cent., but the defective class had increased 155 per cent.
The insane, idiotic, blind, deaf mutes, prisoners, and paupers are enumerated
as defectives.
What you sow, that shall you reap. If you sow the seed of selfishness, and
discord, and lust in the most impressible stages of life, these conditions
become incorporated into the innermost being of the child you carry under
your heart. Your children are cast in your own likeness, and reflect your
conditions at the time of conception and during the nine months of gesta-
tion. This knowledge largely increases the responsibility of parentage, and
addresses itself especially to the moral perceptions of woman, teaching her
what a high and holy calling is hers
And, dear sisters, with this new freedom of thought and action, you must
take the lead in high thinking and pure living. You must attend conscien-
tiously to the pre-natal, as well as post-natal education of children. You
must instruct your sons and daughters in physiology ; the good uses to
which these functions must be applied. You must teach the joy of obedi-
ence to procreative law, and the awful penalties that follow violations.
These duties are due to yourselves, your children, society, and, above all, to
your God, that he be no longer dishonored in marriage. With Gerrit Smith
I exclaim : "Heaven speed the day when man shall be expected to blush as
quick and as deep as woman at any degree of impurity — when the churches,
public opinion, the schools, and the whole world shall demand the same
mental and moral character, strength, beauty, and delicacy for man as for
woman, for woman as for man. There is but one standard of morality for
both man and woman, and as long as a different standard is tolerated, both
sexes will be perverse and corrupt."
276 International Council of Women.
Mrs. Harbert. I now have the pleasure of introducing to you the Pres-
ident of the National Woman Suffrage Association of Massachusetts, Mrs.
Harriette R. Shattuck.
Mrs. Shattuck. It is my habit to go to the foundation of things, so far
as I can, and find those principles which shall be of universal application ;
and it has seemed to me that there are two points in the consideration of
ethical questions which are likely to be overlooked. One of these is that
we need a standard of conduct by which we may solve ethical problems ;
the other is to try to find the philosophical, and, therefore, the true nature
of marriage.
We need very much a standard of conduct which would be applicable to
all cases, so that we may have something better to guide our actions by than
merely the subjective standard of our own individual opinions or convictions ;
that is, something better than the idea that because an act seems right to me,
therefore I am justified in doing it. There are many questions of the day
which are decided on this narrow basis, such as the right to tell little white
lies, the right of a starving man to steal a loaf of bread, the right of a man
to vote with his party, regardless of whether that party is true to 'its prin-
ciples ; and, finally, our special question this morning, the one standard of
purity, is often subjected to this common criterion, and it is claimed that in
certain individual cases unchastity is excusable. Now, we want a better rule
than this. We want an objective standard, a universal principle, outside of
our mere individual decisions, which shall enable us to decide, to solve, one
by one, the problems that vex our lives.
The nearest approach to this absolute standard of morality, this law of
God, which some day we shall more clearly see, is this : Not because an act
is right for me am I justified in. doing it, unless it is also right for you — for
all of us. If a certain course would bring benefit to the world by all per-
sons acting in accordance with it, I may pursue that course. If all of us
may not do so with benefit to the world, I may not. An act is right for me
if and because it is right for you, or for every one ; an act is wrong for me
if and because its effects would be bad if all were to do it. The whole must
decide the duty for the part. That act, the result of which would be bene-
ficial if all were to do it, I may do. Let me illustrate : Is it right for me in
a given case to tell a lie ? Would it be right if all persons told falsehoods in
cases when each thought it excusable ? What would be the result ? We see
that no one could be believed ; that truth would be destroyed ; consequently,
it is wrong for me to tell "the lie. The same with stealing. I would not
condemn the starving man for stealing the loaf of bread. I would excuse
him and help him ; but is his act right? Would it be right for all? Or
would honesty disappear,- the world be able to trust nobody, and a standard
of honor be impossible ? It is clear that this would be the result. There-
fore, I may not steal. It is the same with our question of the one standard
Social Purity. 277
of purity for both sexes. It is right for one person to be impure in any case
if it would be also right for all persons to be so. Would the result be bene-
ficial to the world if all were unchaste ? There is no question of the terri-
ble result of any such general impurity. Therefore, it is wrong for any one
of us, and it makes no difference whether that one be a man or a woman.
Here enters the great question of forgiveness. When may the one who
has sinned be forgiven? The answer to this is that when repentance comes
forgiveness enters, for forgiveness is contingent upon repentance. So only,
Christ forgave. It rests with the one who has been wronged, with God, to
forgive the repentant sinner. I should forgive, you should forgive, the man
who has wronged us, but I have no right to forgive the man who has wronged
another woman. With her alone, and with God, rests his case. This is a
universal principle, and may be applied to every case. It is our duty so to
apply it. For when we have found a principle, then we have a criterion — a
universal, in which all particulars are included, and with which they are at one.
Secondly, as to the true nature of marriage. It is often considered as a
contract. Now, what is a contract? It is a something that relates only to
external things — such, for instance, as property. A contract is always sub-
ject to dissolution by the mutual agreement of the contracting parties. It
can be dissolved when both wish and agree. That marriage is a contract, is
held by those who advocate anarchy, as I heard expressed at a meeting not
long ago in Boston. And the result of this idea would be anarchy indeed,
for it would dissolve all marriages, destroy the family life of the community.
But marriage is not a contract, and, therefore, it can not be dissolved by
mutual agreement. Here enters the whole question of divorce, which I have
no time to consider. I will say that a separation for a cause which destroys
the sacredness of the marriage relation and imperils the birthright of the
children is one thing, while a divorce, with the privilege of remarrying,
is quite another thing. As Hegel expresses it, "contract is the expression
of the accidental will of man (that which is arbitrary, imperfect, undevel-
oped, in his nature), as distinguished from the universal will of man, or that
which is grounded in the necessity of his nature." And the family is the
outgrowth of this universal, necessary nature of mankind,' of the spiritual
nature. It is an expression of the universal, objective truth, an outcome of
man's personality, which is his by virtue of his oneness with the Divine,
the personal Father of whom he is the personal child. In so far'as he is at
one with this divine personality, he himself is personal and universal.
Marriage is, therefore, a sacred institution, grounded in the divine nature
of man as a child of God. It is an ethical relation, not a mere formal one.
Its existence is not arbitrary — dependent upon the caprice of the two who
have assumed the relation — but necessary, dependent upon the moral nature
of man as a spiritual being. Marriage, therefore, is one of the absolute
principles upon which the ethical character of society rests. To quote He-
278 International Council of Women.
gel : " Marriage is essentially a spiritual relation. The acknowledgment and
maintenance of this relation is an express enthronement of the spiritual over
the natural. It involves the subjection of the passions and of the special
changing likes and dislikes of the individual, to the law of a common life, a
common law, and a common good."
Mrs. Harbert. I have the pleasure now to introduce Mrs. S. Magelssen
Groth, delegate of the Norwegian Women's Suffrage Association.
Mrs. Groth. I am sure I am pleased to be here and to attend all the
meetings of the Council.*
The question, Are women to enjoy equal rights with men in political, civil,
and social matters, is not very old in Norway — that is to say, the principal
demand for equality has only been made public for a few years ; but our
women have, I think, from old times been independent in feelings and actions.
Our Saga tales record wives and young girls with wills of their own, and the
ancient national poetry sings not only of sweet Ingeborg and loving, true-
hearted Gudrun, but also of the proud, beautiful Brynhild, who will not
marry any but the most valiant of men, and who, when she learns that she
has been deceived, is not afraid of plotting her lover's death and afterward
killing herself. And among our peasants — the veritable Norwegians and
owners of the land — there has, as I understand, always been, and still is, as
much respect for women's work and duties as for men's. But these ideas
were slumbering in the depth of our national character as vague notions
without any certain form. That they have been called forth at all, and that
the cause of women has been so far advanced as is the case, is due chiefly to
our poets and authors.
The woman's first and most faithful champion is Camilla Collett, the sis-
ter of one of our first and greatest poets, and herself a first-class author.
She raised the woman question about forty years ago, in her great and bril-
liant romance, "Amtmandens Doetre " (the Daughters of the Governor).
But her contemporaries failed to appreciate her, and the author had to retire
into herself, disgusted at the lack of understanding that was shown her,
especially from her own sex. Now, certainly, the women of Norway under-
stand their great obligation to this powerful genius, and I am glad to say
that Mrs. Collet has lived to see this universal admiration.
Henrik Ibsen, our great dramatist, then took up the woman question, and
anew era can be dated from the appearance of his " Dukkehjem " ("A
Doll's Parlor "), in the year 1879. Here the unworthy condition of most
women within marriage, how they make a living by " performing tricks for
their husbands," was shown with such force and vigor, that it struck the
women like a thunderbolt, and at once caused that change in the public
opinion, that had for a long time been under preparation. Ibsen's indirect
appeal to women, to seek and maintain independence, was met with an eager-
* Mrs. G roth's address was not read by her, she simply said a few words of greeting in reply
to her introduction to the audience.
Social Purity. 279
ness that was due to the very conditions of life. In Norway, as anywhere
else, men are too scarce to allow of all women becoming married. And now
Ibsen had shaken the marriage, as the monopolized asylum for women, and
exhorted our women toward independence. The first step in that direction,
quite naturally, is the ability of supporting one's self. Public opinion was
changed, and it was no longer considered "unladylike" for a woman to
support herself, but the difficulty for a woman in Norway, as anywhere else,
I suppose, was and is a double one : the very small opportunities for women
of getting work, relatively to the great number wanting it ; and, second,
the very poor remuneration that their work will yield them, if they succeed
in getting it. I can not here, however, praise our Norwegian women for
originality and initiative faculty. Although of late different kinds of posi-
tions, have been opened for women, as telegraph operators, drug clerks,
cashiers, as clerks in private offices and even in some governmental depart-
ments, still, most ladies turn to teaching. We tread the trodden paths and
do not seek for new fields of labor. The result is that the teaching market
is so flooded, that the wages are very low. Thus, an educated lady, who is
supposed to instruct four or five hours a day, and to be able to teach, beside
the common school branches, three foreign languages (English, French,
German), music, and mathematics, and who is, furthermore, supposed to
make herself generally useful in the house — such a lady gets, as an average,
about fifty dollars a year and board.
A great step forward in the equalization of woman's rights with those of
men, was made when, in 1882, the university opened her gates for women;
and the first student, Miss Cecilia Thoresen, entered with equal rights with
men, to pursue any line of study and pass any of the examinations of the
university. Until then the highest education had been reserved for men.
Now the women got at least an opportunity to show, whether the old talk of
their inferiority to men, was true or not. Since then twenty-four ladies have
entered the university. Thus far none of them have finished the course.
It remains to be seen if they, when this happens, will be appointed to those
public offices to which the examinations they may have passed, ought to
qualify them. As a result of this throwing open the university to women,
most of the normal and high schools leading to the university, were opened
for girls, and great hopes for the future of the woman question, must be
placed in this co-education of the sexes. I am pleased to say we have
imported this co-educational system from the United States. Mrs. Ragna
Nielsen, a very bright lady, has the first mixed school in Christiania, and her
work seems to thrive.
With headquarters in Christiania, and branches all over the country, is an
association for the furtherance of woman's rights; men, as well as women,
are admissible as members, and the number grows rapidly. The object of
this association is — through meetings, lectures, and since 1887 through a
280 International Council of Women.
semi-monthly paper, Nylaende — to enlighten the public as to the true object
of the woman question, and to discuss the best ways of furthering this ob-
ject. The editor of this paper is Miss Gina Krog, a lady ranking among the
first, of those who have espoused the cause of women in Norway. On the
programme of this association is also woman suffrage, and one of its mem-
bers, who is a member of the Storthing, has announced that he will
propose for the legislature, a bill granting the suffrage to women under the
same conditions as to men. Bills changing the constitution of the country
must in Norway be proposed three years before they can be acted upon ;
and, therefore, this bill can not come up earlier than at the next session of the
Storthing. Although there is little hope of its being carried through, the
issue, once raised, will at last be fought to victory. The chief object of the
association, is to effect that radical change of opinion throughout the nation,
that must necessarily be the forerunner of any change in law.
Among the practical objects of our Women's Association, is to secure for
married women the right to dispose of their own earnings and their own
property. At present all property owned by either husband or wife is con-
sidered owned by them both in common, but is wholly at the disposition of
the husband alone, unless it has, before the marriage, been expressly agreed to
by both parties, that each of them is to have the disposition of their own in-
dividual property. A bill making this latter case the rule, and not the ex-
ception, has for several years been befQre the legislature, but has as yet not
been passed.
I have said that the Norwegian women, as women everywhere else in the
world, I believe, lack initiative faculty and originality. In one respect,
however, they show more common sense than ladies of other countries that
I have had the opportunity to see. There are few things more obstructing
for women than the present custom of dressing. The last two or three years
in Norway have produced a radical change in this respect. An originally
American -Swedish book upon dress reform was some years ago introduced in
Norway. The subject of dress was discussed at meetings and privately, and,
as far as my experience goes, ladies have begun to reform, not only in their
thinking about ways of dressing, but also in practical dressing. Certainly
we have not been able to dispose of the petticoat, and will not be able to do
so for a long time, I fear; but we reform our underclothing, and not only
working women, but even society belles, try to do without the corset. This
is to me a good sign, for, as Gerrit Smith says in his letter to Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, 1857, " the relation between the dress and degradation of a woman,
is as vital as between the uses of the inmate of the harem and the apparel and
training provided for her." We all know that woman can not reach full
development, either physically or morally, until she arranges her dress in
accordance with nature's demands. And as our great poet, Bjoernstjerne
Bjoernson, has lately said, "If women only knew or would think seriously
Social Purity. 281
what kind of ladies they are striving to imitate in their present costumes,
would they maintain them?" Bjoernson here seems to indicate that the way of
dressing has relation to the way of living, and, indeed, the_ question that at pres-
ent attracts most attention, not only in Norway, but throughout Scandinavia,
is that of social purity. No wonder, when we consider the wide bearing of
this question, not only upon the present generation, but also upon all the
future life of the people ; also here the issue was raised by one of our poets,
Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson, in his drama, "EnHanske" (A Gauntlet), which
was published in the year 1883. Here he answers the question, "Has a
woman a right to expect the same purity in her future husband as he demands
from her?" in the affirmative, and lets his heroine, Svava, refuse her lover
and affianced husband, when she learns about his former life. He tries to
persuade her that men's morality must not be judged by the same standard as
that of women, and then she throws down to him the gauntlet.
We have now two parties. Bjoernson, who is the leader of the largest and
most powerful party, claims that marriage ought to be, as it now is, the only
legalized form for men and women living together, but at the same time he
wants it to be a real single marriage. He will that men be pure and restrain
their passions in their youth, and when they marry they shall be faithful for
life, to the chosen one. The other party, calling themselves the Bohemians,
have, though small in number, made a great noise, and some of their leaders
have set forth their views, in anything but an attractive and sympathetic man-
ner. They claim, as far as I have been able to understand, that neither man
nor woman ought to live an abstinent life, and as social conditions prevent
marrying at an early age, it would be better to live together with the girl
they love, than for young men to go to the prostituted women, or for women
to live a youth without love. It is not quite clear to me, and I do not think
even to the leaders themselves, how their idea is to be carried out practically ;
but I really sympathize with the thought of a young couple living and work-
ing together in their youth, especially if such a beginning could end in
faithful love for life. For at present social conditions in our country, are
not at all favorable for early marriages. Young men have to finish their
studies, or in another way to prepare for a livelihood during so many weary
years of their youth, that they may be twenty-five years or more before they
are even able to support themselves. The American fashion of boarding,
that seems so practical for y oung married couples of limited means, is un-
known. Society demands that the husband shall bring his wife to a fully
and nicely furnished home, with a servant girl to attend to the household
duties. I confess those young homes, where the husband is absent all day,
striving to earn the money necessary for housekeeping, and where the young
wife, who may, before she married, have been earning her own living, has
nothing to do except waiting for the baby that is to come, those homes leave
a painful impression with me. And before the man marries, as the Bohe-
19
282 International Council of Women.
mians say, he has led an impure life, because he could not live with the gir)
he loved, unless offering her such a sheltered home. However, I ought to
say that some people think that the only principle of the Bohemians — and
so might, perhaps, be the case with some of them — is to yield to any tempo-
rary passion. We all agree that this obviously is an abominable principle.
These same Bohemians claim that sexual abstinence is obnoxious as well for
women as for men.
Against this doctrine and against this party, Bjoernson has, for some months
past, been waging a relentless war — lecturing all over the country. He con-
tends that nobody was ever hurt by sexual abstinence, and his opinion is sus-
tained by the medical faculty of the University of Chnstiania, who, in an
open letter, have declared it their belief, that moral purity tends toward
strengthening mind and body, and is of benefit for the physical and moral
development.
The great temptation to sin — the public houses of vice — have, I am glad
to say, been closed in Christiania since February 15th, this year. Our organ-
ization has for along time tried to get prostitution abolished, and, with such
a helper as Bjoernson, they have succeeded.
This whole movement might seem a little peculiar in a country where
public prostitution has never existed ; but to those who know the moral
conditions all over Europe, it is no wonder that this question has been
the all-absorbing topic throughout Scandinavia. However, according to
my opinion, there has been too much talk about it of late. Love is
not the only thing necessary to make people happy. And our Women's
Association, in the paper it publishes, has in this fight very judiciously
maintained the truth — that the first and most important thing for women
is economic independence, in which all other independence roots. But
who can tell in what time, this fact will be clear to all and when the
work for independence will begin in earnest? Women in Norway, as
anywhere else, consider working a temporary life until they shall marry, and
once married they, as anywhere else, abide by keeping their own houses.
Of course the working class is excepted from this rule, but we other Nor-
wegian women, I am sorry to say, are still far from aspiring to that inde-
pendence that is reached by steady work in one direction. However, that
we begin to understand the importance of this question is shown by the
great interest lately taken in the Swedish author, Mrs. Edgreen's " En Som-
mersaga" (A Summer Tale). Mrs. Edgreen depicts that conflict that must
necessarily arise in a marriage where the work for which the wife has edu-
cated herself, and to which she has given up her life, does not agree with her
becoming a mother and keeping house at that place, where the husband's
business makes it necessary for him to live. It is this question that, accord-
ing to my opinion, is the vital one in the whole women's rights movement —
the question how women, when they have been educated for an independent
Social Purity. 28£
position, shall be able to reconcile this position with their duties toward'
husbands and children, and what it is that has to be changed ; the present:
condition of companionship between man and woman, or the men and'
women within the limits of these conditions.
Mrs. Harbert. We will now have the pleasure of listening to a delegate
from the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Mrs. Clara Cleg-
horne Hoffman.
Mrs. Hoffman. Some learned savant has said that whatever of good we
would have appear in the national life, must first be taught in the schools of
the country, that it may become part and parcel of the coming citizen in the
formative period of his life. The home teaching precedes the school, and
parents teach, not only by precept and example, but by that subtle trans-
mission and influence, giving the first germ of life a stamp before the child
even sees the light of day; then, primary in this discussion, must be pre-
natal influences in this question of social purity. In thousands of homes
everything seems to be perfectly pure, perfectly moral, and the children are
tenderly shielded from wrong, the boys and girls and their associates are
tenderly cared for, and their reading carefully chosen, and yet, observation,
as well as statistics, teaches us that hundreds go forth from these homes to
swell the ranks of recognized prostitution, while thousands more go forth into
the ranks of legalized prostitution under the perfectly respectable mantle of
marriage.
The fires of passion and lust lurk in those homes like the covered fires
of Lucknow, only needing the occasion, only needing the temptation, to
burst forth into flame, carrying death and destruction to every pure, and
true, and lovely attribute of heart and soul. What was the trouble? Where
was the failure? Surely, parents have failed in self-restraint, and this
gratification, this indulgence of passion, has left its indelible impress upon
the young life they have created. Everywhere in nature we see God's
beneficent law of procreation. We also see that the beasts of the field and
the birds of the air, obey this law, and the results of instinct are higher
and better than the results of reason, when overcome by passion. Yet
reason is higher than instinct, as a man is higher than the brute creation.
Until man and woman, consorting as husband and wife, to found the
home, to bring to that home the sweetness, and beauty, and grace and
blessedness of childhood, shall have learned a wise, a humane, and a Christian,
self-restraint, we shall make slow progress in social purity.
Self-restraint in marriage is more the exception than the rule. I only
have to appeal to those that have had much to do with women, and much corre-
spondence with them to ratify this, and this is true among the cultured and
Christian. Few parents, even in these classes of cultured and Christian, are
wise enough and chaste enough, to regard woman during the period of ges-
tation as a being set apart to holy and sacred uses. Neither the mother nor
284 International Council of Women.
the father of the young life that she is cherishing beneath her heart, is wise
enough and chaste enough to decide that no passion shall touch, no breath
of lust shall sully, the temple consecrated to that profound mystery, the gen-
eration and development of a new life.
Mother love leads her to comprehend this profound mystery which is going
on in her being, and this eternal law that must be fulfilled; and seeing that,
she begins to reach out after the best and the holiest, for the young life that
has been invoked. Her soul is filled with better aspirations, though she be
ignorant, though she be degraded, there come to her these holy question-
ings that never were there before; and is it strange that she should say in the
midst of all this, "the life that I am to bring forth into the world is the highest
form of creation, and I, the mother of that highest form of creation, am not I
. worthy of the care and the consideration that is given to the finest breed of
stock? Is not the child that I shall give into the world higher and nobler
than calf or foal ?" And yet such consideration is not shown, and my soul is
hot with indignation when I think of the millions of pregnant women in the
world, bowed down under the burdens of manual toil, and yet compelled to
satisfy the demands of lust, intensified by drink and by tobacco. * * *
What is the cure ? All remedies will be partial and disappointing until
women stand, everywhere, on perfect equality with men ; until the church,
and the law, and society, recognize marriage as a partnership in which she is
one of the equal partners. Marriage I am talking about, not goods and
chattels ; and until then this horror will go on, of lustful children brought
into life, and a fresh crop again to perpetuate and intensify the cancer that
is eating out the life of the nation. Then, and not until then, shall we be
on the road to reform. * * *
Then woman will honor and respect herself, and man will honor and
cherish her, instead of loving and lusting after her. Then parents, pure
themselves, will have no shame in teaching their children the wondrous
mysteries of their own being, the marvelous functions of their beautiful
bodies. Then they will not leave to servants, often degraded and ignorant, and
to schoolmates and to evil books, the secrets most sacred in God's universe
to be imparted to their children. Then children will be born who can say,
" My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure."
Mrs. Harbert. I present the following paper from Mrs. Lucinda B.
Chandler, who is unable to be present :
MARRIAGE REFORM.
Three measures to promote social purity and moral education are called
for : mothers' homes or mothergartens; special instruction of youth to fit
them, so far as right knowledge and spiritual truth can do so, for parenthood;
and universal kindergarten training. The mothergartens should give refuge
to every woman and wife who, during gestation, needs the blessed influence
of a real home, or deliverance from the so-called marital rights of our in-
Social Purity. 285
iquitous legal marriage system. Here the mother should be helped in every
manner to live for the benefit of the foetal organism, which the divine power
will make with tendencies upward and good, if the mother co-operates by
aspiration and earnest desire, when obstructions are removed.
It is the riot ofcarnalism, which the license of marriage claims to sanctify,
that perpetuates the lustful, selfish propensities in force and fury, inten-
sifies the downward revolution of the life, toward the animal, and cre-
ates the perversity that is so much more degraded than the animal. No lan-
guage can properly designate it. Woman's era implies and involves a re-
form of the relations of man and woman, as conjugal partners and as parents.
In this reform lies the possibility of eliminating the shocking barbarities by
which civilization is disgraced. Man's legal institution of marriage was
based upon the idea that woman's office in social economy is chiefly that of
child-bearer. Laws were made requiring the husband to provide for his own
children, and to protect him from the possibility of becoming responsible
for the support of those of another man. Man-made laws have placed the
control of the person of the wife in his discretion, like any other property.
Church and State have combined to deprive womanhood of its sanctity in
wifehood, and to rob the mother both of her natural right to choose its ex-
ercise and to legally possess the child she has borne.
Woman as well as man must eliminate from marriage the features of pros-
titution, for when prostitution ceases inside of marriage it will disappear
outside. The repeal of the law of coverture, leaving the wife free to main-
tain her self-respect and to determine the exercise of her function of ma-
ternity, will confer the greatest service legislation can render. We have the
important lesson to learn that purity, moral advancement, and the higher
humanity, can not be evolved by statute. The key-note of the new dispen-
sation is spiritual truth. Man is a soul force, capable of becoming an agency
of divine power, not chiefly an animal organism endowed with intelligence.
How shall woman be educated to know she has the right to control her
owrTperson? By listening to the voice of her own soul, setting aside every
inbred idea that has come down from male theology and statute. Man is
no more qualified to teach woman, in regard to the requirements of her
being, as the mother of the race, as race builder, than he is to fulfill the
function of maternity. Ask the truth in your own soul fervently, and dare
to obey its light. " They who sow to the flesh shall, of the flesh, reap cor-
ruption." A ceremony and a legal permit do not change the procedure of
that law. Read a lesson, too, from the animal kingdom, and see what the
unerringness of instinct illustrates. And is the mother of men rightly a
slave when no female below her is so degraded ? Study the evidences scat-
tered thickly in the history of motherhood showing how mighty is the influ-
ence on pre-natal life of the mental and emotional force of the mother.
Power is the measure of responsibility. * * *
286 International Council of Women.
A resolution was adopted to send cablegrams of greeting
to Mrs. Priscilla Bright McClaren, Mrs. Elmy, Mrs. Jacob
Bright, Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, to Queen Victoria, to the
Empress of Germany, and to the Crown Princess of Denmark.
Mrs. Harbert. It is now my pleasure to present Miss Willard, who will
give us the benediction upon the subject that is before us.
Miss Anthony. There has been a bill presented by Miss Willard, asking
Congress to pass a law to raise the age of consent to eighteen years in the
District of Columbia and the Territories, and the members of Congress ask
that this petition be signed, first by the officers and then by as many members
of this Council as possible. It will be in room 41 in the Riggs House
during to-day and to-morrow, and I hope every woman present will call and
sign this petition.
Miss Willard. I trust you will all feel there is an absolute obligation
laid upon you as the result of what has passed through your brain and heart
this morning, to put your names to this petition. It has been circulated
from one end of this country to the other, and, notwithstanding a large
majority of us who are present, have not put our names upon it yet, let us
remember that it is a most important petition.
Now, in closing this magnificent meeting, a poor little Protestant nun
comes before you, and feels that she hasn't much right to talk to you at all ;
feels that the high and solemn mysteries, that have been spoken of in such
varied tone and manner to-day, are those that she ought not to try to deal
with ; feels more than ever, the inadequacy of one whose life has been
apart,1 to try to speak of these things. All the time these ladies have
spoken so bravely, or so tenderly, on this historic morning, my thoughts
have been at work. I have seemed to see those two who went forth hand in
hand from Eden on the saddest of all mornings, after the fall, and I have said
in my heart, Oh, if those clasped hands had never parted company, our poor
world had been to-day the place God wants to see it, and the place that Christ
came to make it. I have said in my heart, would that the other half of the
audience were here. This is only half the circle ; we ought to have had it
builded out and had the others here. So I have only to offer you the
thought, that every objection that has been brought forward, every philosoph-
ical statement that has been made, is based upon, that out of the aggrega-
tion of men by themselves, always comes harm; out of the coming of men
and women into true, and noble, and high conditions, side by side, always
comes good. Where is it that you have this curse most deeply rooted and
most apologized for, by men ? In the camps of the soldiery. What
would woman's coming forward into that life tend to bring about? The
reign of peace. The mother heart that can not be legislated in and can
not be legislated out would say: " I will not give my sons to be butchered
in great battles," and we would have arbitration.
Social Purity. 287
My noble friend, who spoke so bravely, Mrs. Hoffman, said: "I call mar-
riage a contract, because I don't think of just the word I mean j and I do not
mean a contract as to goods and chattels. Until woman has complete
industrial freedom, marriage is an industrial contract ; until woman has the
purse jointly in her hand, marriage will never be the thing we want to see it."
This question resolves itself into all the magnificent enterprises represented
by these women who stand on this platform, while doubtless you who are
here in the audience, stand just as true in your own circles. So that my
heart is full of hope, and, out of the long savagery, and darkness, and crime,
I see you coming up amid the brightness and the beauty of a new civili-
zation. I see that the noblest men of the world's noblest race, the men of
the Anglo-Saxon, who made this audience possible; the men who have
thus striven and worked side by side with us, to bring about these great
conditions, shall place upon woman's brow the crown of Minerva, and lead
us forward to help them make a new government, so I speak to you the words
of hope. There is nothing on this earth that I tried more earnestly to
instill into my girls' hearts, when I was teaching, than a superior, womanly
self-respect. I doubt if we have it as the women of the future will, or as we
ought to have it ourselves.
Why, I pass signs in the street ; I pass exhibitions of women in the cigar
stores and saloons that, if we were as self-respectful as we ought to be,
couldn't stay there over night; I see beautiful women in beautiful robes
walking on the streets, or hear of them in fine social surroundings, with a
man at their side, puffing tobacco-smoke into their faces and eyes ;' and I
say that is a survival of past savagery, and debasement, and immolation of
woman. If there is anything on earth I covet that pertains to men it is their
self-respect. No man would be seen with a woman with the faintest tint or
tinge of tobacco about her ; no man would allow himself to enter into mar-
riage with a woman of known habits of drinking or impurity ; it isn't think-
able. When I see women coming out before men, or when I know they do —
I do not see them, they are not women with whom I am socially acquainted —
revealing the sacredness of the pure symbol and badge of their womanly
nature, coming out so that the joke, and jest, and jibe, are uttered in the ante-
room, where young men smoke cigars and hob-nob together, I say I could
weep my life out that a woman thus appears, thus decked, thus dressed, bor-
rowing that style from women the hem of whose garments she would be
ashamed to touch Let us have self-respect. Let us be clothed w ith a
raiment of purity that ought to guard the virgin, the mother, and the wife.
When we assemble socially and allow scenes to be put before us that
are indecorous and shameful, we have passed from the purity and self-
respect that must and shall characterize the woman of the future. Oh,
friends, these things are so deep in my heart ! Girls come and ask me,
" Would you dance round dances? " " Oh, my sister, my dear little sister,
288 International Council of Women.
no ; don't dance a round dance." The woman of the future will not do it.
I walked the aisles of the picture galleries of Europe. I saw the men in
those great historic paintings, with their ear-rings and their fingers covered
with rings, bedecked with ruffles, and dressed in all the hues that the peacock
and rainbow could supply. That was the time when King Louis XIV. said :
" The State, it is I." They were nothing but a parcel of courtiers. When
a woman shall be able to say to the State, " I am part of you just as much as
anything that breathes; " when she shall say, " I am part of society, I am part
of the industrial value, I am part of everything that a man values; everything
that a man's brain loves to think about in philosophy, in philanthropy, or
history, or science, I think about it in the same lines," then the calm equi-
poise shall come ; and for that I would like to live ; for that I would like to
speak. Persons who know more about it than I tell me that women who
give their lives to shame, women who are on the street-corners with their in-
vitations at night, are women who have, from the very look of the face an d
configuration of the head, the symbols and emblems of no self-respect. The
superior, queenly woman is the one that has the most self-respect, and sees its
application to everything around her, and makes every man feel that he would
as soon die, as offer her an insult.
The brothers of women — the Arabs love to say of a pure man that he
is a brother of girls — the brotherly men will come forward to meet and
respond to- the sisterly women. When we are not toys, when we are not
dolls but duchesses, when we stand before them royal, crowned with heart of
love and brain of fire, then shall come the new day. I ignore nothing that
has been said. I am, in hearty sympathy with all. But, in my own thought,
this has come as the key-note that must be struck. God grant that we may
be so loving and so gentle in it all, that there shall be no vanity, no pride,,
for the grandest natures are the humblest.
Let me speak a word of hope. I have heard this statement from a woman
who has come from Germany, a woman for years a student in the universi-
ties. She says the professors' wives tell her that the new science has devel-
oped this thought, and that professors are saying to their young men: "If you
want a scintillating brain, if you want magnificent power of imagination,
conserve every force, be as chaste as your sister is, and put your power into
that brain that throbs like an untired engine." * * * I do not know how
you feel, but I want to take this woman by the hand, this sweet-faced and
sweet-voiced English woman, who, last night when all of us were asleep,,
went out into the holiness of the moonlight and saw that our capital was not
so bad as London ; this woman who went to see the little girl that hadn't
been taught and hadn't been helped, and came from her country home and
was getting entangled in the meshes of that great Babylon. God bless you,
Mrs. Chant, you are welcome to America. I thought, while you were speak-
Social Purity. 289
ing, of what our Whitrier said of the countries " Unknown to other rivalries
than of the mild humanities and gracious interchange of good —
" While met beneath protecting fla*rs we closer stand—
The eagle of our native crags, the lion of our mother land."
We women are clasping hands. You do not know how much it means. I
have sought this woman from over the water. I wanted her to come over
here with her large experience in the work. I have not seen so many sor-
rowful girls, and don't know how to reach them, only in a general way ; and
I have asked her if she will stay and teach us, and she says she will stay in
America, if we want her. Are you not glad ? So understand that the Na-
tional Woman's Christian Temperance Union is going to keep Mrs. Chant
here and send her about with her sweet evangelism. Now I think, dear
friends, that we have certainly this morning boxed the compass of this won-
derful thought.
The following letters to the Council refer directly to the sub-
ject of this session:
The York Branch of the Ladies' National Association
For the Abolition of Government Regulation of Yice.
To Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Washington,
President of the International Council of Women :
Madam : We, the committee of the above association, rejoice in the event of the
assembling of your great International Convention. We send you our hearty greet-
ing, and desire to express our earnest interest and sympathy. May your counsels
promote largely the noble idea of an universal sisterhood of women, binding hearts
together, the world over, in one common effort to elevate our womanhood.
May the interchange of opinions on the great questions which come before you
for consideration, arouse new desires, promote fresh efforts, and lead to devising
effective methods toward enabling women to occupy their right and proper places,
side by side with men in the affairs of the home, the church, and the State. We
crave that you may be rightly guided in all your decisions. May the blessing of
Almighty God rest upon your assembly. '
We are your sisters.
Signed on behalf of the above section of the Social Purity Organizations,
Lucretia H. Kendall Clark, 9 Feversham Terrace, York.
Mary G. Barron, Eon. Treasurer.
Maria Richardson, Hon. Secretary, Cherry Hill House, York.
York, March 12, 1888.
National Vigilance Association,
267 Strand, London, W. C. , March, 1888.
To the Women's Congress, Washington, IT. S. A.
Ladies: The National Vigilance Association desire to offer you their congratula-
tions on the important Congress which you have this year assembled. They recog-
nize the teaching of history that the position of women is the touchstone of ^civili-
zation, and trust the outcome of your labors will be to give great impulse to the
many movements for the elevation of women, on both sides of the Atlantic.
290 International Council of Women.
This association was formed nearly three years ago, and has for its principal object
the protection of the virtue of young girls from force and fraud. It also suppresses
houses of ill-fame, checks the fraudulent export and import of girls, watches reg-
istry offices and generally gives gratuitous advice and assistance to all comers within
the scope of its objects. The work of its Organizing, Legal, Parliamentary, Rescue
and Preventive, Literature, Foreign Traffic, and Finance Sub-Committees, needs no
detailing here.
Such being its general scope, the association commends its work to the attention
of the Congress as one specially engaging to women. It seeks the relief of large
numbers of young women from a practical slavery, into which they are betrayed by
persons who take shameful advantage of their inexperience, and only too often use
an actual force worthy only of savage and barbarous counti'ies.
In particular, the Rescue and Preventive, and the Foreign Traffic Sub- Committees
of the Association desire to bring before the Congress several special topics on which
interchange of thought and concerted action between American and English socie-
ties seem desirable, and with that view submit separate memoranda which are
appended.
Signed on behalf of the National Vigilance Association,
Percy William Bunting,
Chairman of Executive Committee.
NATIONAL VIGILANCE ASSOCIATION.
We desire to express our warm sympathy with the members of the Women's
International Council, about to meet in Washington, in their various and earnest
efforts to promote the amelioration of the condition of women. We feel that by
intercommunication of the two nations, much mutual assistance can be given.
For some time past we have been seriously considering the condition of children
in theaters, pantomimes, and music halls. We are informed that English children
are every year taken to America and other countries, in traveling companies, to per-
form in the great towns, and that their moral surroundings are fraught with the
gravest peril. We understand that it is contrary to the law of the United
States that children of very tender years, should be thus employed. But owing
to the short time that the companies remain in each locality, and to the cumbrous
nature of legal institutions, these companies have made their harvest and are off,
before any proceedings can be taken. We should be glad to rouse the attention of
the Council to this subject.
We believe that already much care is taken by the emigration authorities as to
the safety of girls arriving at the ports, but that there is still a large amount of
leakage. This, perhaps, is not wholly avoidable, but still we think that too much
care can not be taken, to ensure that these newly-arriving emigrants, who might be
so profitable as servants, and in other capacities, to those in whose country they
come to reside, should not, on first coming, fall into such evil hands as shall make
them forever afterward worthless to society, and probably a heavy pecuniary bur-
den on it. The case of Mormon girls and women is a serious one. They go over,
unobserved, from our country as ordinary emigrants, but are really in the hands of
those who, under various pretexts, get them away to Utah. Some inquiry having
been made on the arrival of suspected parties in New York, we understand they
now go by another route, so that detection is difficult.
We should be glad to know if there is any aim in the various States to raise to
uniformity the age of protection of young girls. We understand that it ranges from
Social Purity. 291
twelve to twenty-one in the different States. We should like to know the opinion
of the Congress as to the age to which it should be raised. We in England are anxious
that it should be raised to at least eighteen. By our act of 1885 it was raised to six-
teen.
We should like to know what regulations are in force in the United States, as to
the provision of female police officers for the supervision of the women arrested and
temporarily confined in police cells. At present in this country, although no male
warders, etc., are allowed on the female side of our prisons, no similar precaution is
observed in police cells, where men only are employed. We are endeavoring to get
this altered, and we should be very glad to be in possession of the experience of
other countries on the subject. /
Finally, we should be glad to know the views of the Council on the question of
the occupation of girls rescued from a life of vice; what their opinion is as to homes,
and the length of time to be spent there; also, whether they think the greater free-
dom of girls in all classes in America tends to a higher tone of morality or to its
relaxation.
Signed on behalf of the Preventive and Rescue Sub-Committee,
Millicent Garret Fawcett.
Annette Bear.
national vigilance association.
The Foreign Traffic Sub-Committee is using its best powers to prevent young
women being induced by fraud to go abroad into houses of ill-fame, or into occupa-
tions of evil character, or which would lead to their ruin. The main labors of
this committee have been directed to the continent of Europe, but they take this
opportunity of laying before the women of America this important matter, and of
asking whether they will co-operate with this Association, in securing proper super-
vision in immigrant vessels on the ocean, and in preventing those who trade in the
vice of others in the United States, either from importing women by fraud from
abroad, or in getting hold of them at the immigration depots in New York and
elsewhere.
Signed on behalf of the committee for the Suppression of Foreign Traffic,
Elizabeth S. Lidgett.
The session closed with the singing of "America."
FEIDAY, MARCH 30, 1888.
EVENING SESSION.
POLITICAL CONDITIONS.
Miss Anthony presiding. Invocation by the Rev. Amanda
Deyo.
Miss Anthony. I have now the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Isabella
Beecher Hooker, of Connecticut.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES.
Mrs. Hooker. In the month of August, 1774, that eminent statesman
and true patriot, Thomas Jefferson, in a little tract entitled "A Summary
View of the Rights of British America," used certain words, which I will
take for my text. " The whole art of government consists in the art of
being honest." And again : " The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at
the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but can not disjoin, them."
I ask your patient attention while I attempt to show, first, that
under a proper interpretation of the Constitution of the United States,
which he had so large a part in preparing, women have a right to vote — to-
day, now, this moment — on precisely the same terms with men ; and, sec-
ondly, that they ought, for various reasons, to exercise this right without
molestation, and men ought to help them to do so by every means in their
power.
In the Constitution of the United States there is not a line nor a word for-
bidding women to vote, but, properly interpreted by the Declaration of Inde-
pendence and the assertions of the fathers, it actually guarantees to women
the right to vote in all elections, both State and national. The preamble to
the Constitution is the key to what follows — it is the concrete statement of
the great principles which subsequent articles express in detail. It says :
•'We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America." Women are "people " surely, and desire, as
much as men to say the least, to establish justice and to insure domestic tran-
quillity ; and, brothers, you will never insure domestic tranquillity in the days
to come, unless you allow women to vote who pay taxes and bear equally with
yourselves all the burdens of society, for they do not mean any longer to
endure patiently and quietly such injustice, and the sooner men understand
this and graciously submit to become the political equals of their mothers,
Political Conditions. 293
wives, and daughters — aye, of their grandmothers, for that is my category —
instead of their political masters, as they now are, the sooner will this precious
domestic tranquillity be insured. Women were surely " people " when these
words were written, and were as anxious as men to establish justice and promote
the general welfare, and no one will have the hardihood to deny that our fore-
mothers did their full share in the work of establishing justice, providing for
the common defense, and promoting the general welfare in all those early
days. When liberties had to be gained by the sword and protected by the
sword, men necessarily came to the front and seemed to be the only defenders
of these liberties ; hence all the way down, women have been content to do
their patriotic work silently and through men, who are the fighters by nature ;
but now, at last, when it is established that ballots instead of bullets are to
rule the world, it is high time that women ceased to attempt to establish
justice, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to
themselves and their posterity, through the votes of men, because they can
not control these votes and turn them to high moral uses in government.
The Constitution, which became the law of the land in 1789, embraced in
its provisions women as well as men, and the word " people," so frequently
used, always included them. This is true of the four articles which I will
consider, and of every other article in the Constitution, where the word
people is used. Article I of the amendments is : " The right of the people
to peaceably assemble and petition for a redress of grievances," etc. No
one doubts that women have that right equally with men ; in fact, it is about
the only political right that is cheerfully accorded to us to-day, because it is
so easy to get rid of us and silence us in that way. For years and years
women have been petitioning Congress and the State legislatures to take
down the political bars which men have put up, contrary to the whole spirit
of our Government, and allow them to become active co-workers in pro-
moting the general welfare ; but the reply has been, " leave to withdraw,"
or its equivalent, simply because these petitioners had no power to cut off
the heads of these Congressmen and Assemblymen, their political heads, I
mean, because we do not believe in bloodshed of any sort. So long ago as
1871, I got an order from a Senator to search the Secretary's office for peti-
tions then on file, and the clerk found the names of 20,000 women slumber-
ing in the dusty pigeon-holes in his office, and the honorable gentleman,
who asked me with a smile of contempt, " How many women really wanted
to vote? " was surprised at the record, which was not a tenth part of the
number that had been wearily petitioning our legislative bodies year after
year since 1848.
Article II, with its provisions for " the right of the people to keep and bear
arms," etc., which right women assuredly have equally with men, and which,
unless some new protective element is brought into society, women will be
compelled to use in self-defense ; for the crimes against woman in her very
294 International Council of Women.
womanhood, are becoming unendurably frequent all over our land. The one
protective element is the ballot in her own hands, since it is already
in the hands of the ruffians who make night hideous, and who virtually
close the thoroughfares of our cities and villages, even to honest women,
the moment the sun has gone down. Have you ever thought of it, gentle-
men ? You who are opposed to woman's use of the ballot, that among her
so-called protectors, who are to use her ballot for her, are these very men
for whom we build our jails and penitentiaries, taxing the women to do it,
and that every election day sees paupers and vagrants taken from the work-
houses, to elect the men who are to make and administer the laws for all
women ?
Article IV provides for the right of " the people to be secure against unrea-
sonable searches and seizures," etc. Women surely need to be thus secured.
And Article IX provides that the " enumeration in the Constitution of certain
rights shall not be construed to deny others retained by the people." Is it
not perfectly cle?r that all these are the rights of women equally with men,
and that the term " people " as here used, was intended to embrace both?
Thus, then, the preamble and the Constitution, under which our Govern-
ment was formed and began its work of protective legislation, plainly em-
braced women in all their provisions, and when the preamble declares that
the object of all was " to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity," it surely did not mean to secure these blessings of liberty to the
half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people,
women as well as men. And note again the word *' secure " in this pream-
ble, which is scarcely less important than the word "people." "Secure
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity" — not give, but secure
the blessings of liberty, to those who already had the right to them from God,
and who were coming together for purposes of defense, as against an outside
world that still insisted that liberty was not the right of the many, but of the
few, who might be able to overthrow this right of individuals to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness unless they combined together to secure it.
And this is where the Declaration of Independence comes in as an inter-
preter of the Constitution, and it utters no uncertain voice on this question
as to who are the people meant in the preamble and articles following. It
says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident" (mark that self-evident ;
that is, that they require no proof) ; " that all men are- created equal ; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure
these rights " (here again is the word " secure," not give, grant, or bestow)
"governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed" (not from the consent of half the governed —
the consent of the male half — but the governed), and that " whenever any
form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the
Political Conditions. 295
people to alter or abolish it, and institute a new government, laying its
foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." That is
to say, the fathers, in Congress assembled in Philadelphia on the 4th of July,
1776, proclaimed over the whole earth, that governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed, and that taxation without repre-
sentation is tyranny, and for the support of this declaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection of divine Providence, they mutually pledged to
each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor ; and yet we
are told to-day that the women of these States have no right to vote until
the men, who alone have been in the habit of voting, shall make some new
and special laws to meet their case ; in other words, till men shall give
and grant women a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — a
right to promote the general welfare — a right to establish justice and secure
the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity. Now, friends, do
you wonder that it makes my blood boil, to hear from the lips of mere boys
the assertion that they and their sex alone, have the right to make and exe-
cute the laws that I and my daughters are to live under ; that they, are born
to rule, and we born to obey ?
You tell me that I must submit to conditions before I can vote ; I, who
am a free-born citizen of the United States, while you admit the igno-
rant foreigner, if a man, to the full privileges and responsibilities of
citizenship. I defy this assumption of power on the part of men of this
country. I declare to you, as did the apostle Paul: "I am free-born."
" With a great price obtained I this freedom," said the Roman centurion to
this old patriot apostle, but he replied, " I am free-born." Ah, friends,
there is music in these words, to my ear. They are the deep vibrations of
a soul that loves its country as itself, and there are tens of thousands of
women to-day ready to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred
honor, to the maintenance of their rights as free-born citizens of this republic,
and who will never willingly consent to such desecration of Constitutions,
State or national, as would be caused by the addition of special articles pro-
viding for the right of women to vote. Such articles would virtually read
thus : "All men are created equal ; all women are also created equal, not
only to each other, but to men; all men may peaceably assemble and petition
for redress of grievances, may keep and bear arms, may be secure against
unreasonable searches and seizures, may retain to themselves all rights not
enumerated in the Constitution, and all women may assemble," etc., etc.
As well may theologians interpret " Whatsoever ye would that men should
do unto you, do ye even so to them," to mean literally men, and therefore
demand a new scripture specially to include women in these and the like
injunctions, " He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth
not shall be condemned," "No man can serve two masters," "A good
296 International Council of Women.
man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things," etc.
No, friends, the truth is precedent, and prejudice, custom, and conservatism
are the only barriers against women in government to-day. Constitutions
are all right when properly interpreted.
The one article of the national Constitution which, it is claimed, for-
bids women to vote, in fact guarantees to women the right to vote for
members of Congress, rather than forbids it, and not only so, but it act-
ually calls upon the General Government to interfere with the State gov-
ernments, if necessary, for the purpose of protecting women in the exercise
of this right. Article I, section 2, says: "The House of Representatives
shall be chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and
the electors of each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors
of the most numerous branch of the State legislature." Here you have in
full the only paragraph in the United States Constitution that can be tor-
tured by our adversaries, to exclude women from voting for United States
officers. I speak advisedly when I say "adversaries," for, friends, it is no
pleasant task, this work of going up and down the length and breadth of the
land, proclaiming that women are free, and ought to exercise their freedom
under a sense of responsibility by the conscientious use of the ballot, the
only token of political responsibility, and the men who keep up these laws
of precedent and shut us off from the expression of our will in matters of
government are the worst kind of adversaries. They compel us to most un-
welcome duty, and to penalties of whose sting they have but little concep-
tion. Some of us know to-day of fire and fagot in our hearts, whose burn-
ing makes deeper scars than the martyr fires of old, and were it not for faith
in God, we should have given up the contest long ago.
Here, then, you have, I say, the only argument against the right of women
to vote, contained in the Constitution of the United States, and, briefly
stated, it is this : The latter clause says that electors for members of Con-
gress must have the same qualifications as electors for members of the State
legislature, and the constitution of Connecticut, for instance, declares in
Article VI, section 2, that " Every white male citizen of the United States,
who shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, and resided in this State
one year and in the town six months, and shall be able to read any article of
the Constitution, shall, on his taking such oath as may be prescribed bylaw,
be an elector of the State." Now, say objectors, women are not white male
citizens of the United States, and, as these are the only ones that may choose
members of the legislature, these are the only ones who may choose mem-
bers of Congress. To which I reply, first, that, by the Fourteenth Amend-
ment to the Constitution of the United States, the word white was expressly,
and the word male virtually, blotted out from all our State constitutions, and
in Connecticut black men, under that amendment, were allowed to vote for
years before the word "white" was expunged from its constitution; and,
Political Conditions. 297
second, that the first clause of this Article II, section 2, which says that the
House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen by the
people, denies to every State the right to make any qualification for State
electors that shall interfere with the predominating right of the whole people
to elect their members of Congress.
It is as if the United States Constitution had said : " The right of trial
by jury shall be secured to all the people of the United States ;" and Con-
necticut had said in her constitution : " Every white male citizen shall be
entitled to a trial by jury." Plainly such an article of a State constitution
would be pronounced null and void, and the only reason the other has not
been so pronounced long ago, is that in the beginning, men alone thought of
voting, wished to vote, did vote ; and so the authors of the State constitu-
tions, in defining who should be electors, naturally and as a matter of exact-
ness, and without any thought of women, said : " All white male citizens "
with such and such qualifications may vote. And the case is all the stronger
for women than for black men, because the enslavement and disfranchise-
ment of black men was contemplated, reluctantly, it is true, but nevertheless
contemplated and recognized by the national Constitution, while the dis-
franchisement of women was not thought of or considered. This is so true
that women did actually vote in a few instances in the earlier days, and they
only ceased to do so, »beeause they did not appreciate its importance, or, as
in New Jersey, because that State, in direct violation of the Constitution of
the United States, as I think, specially disfranchised the women of the State.
And to those who may not be ready to admit that the national Constitu-
tion secures to women the right to vote in all cases equally with men, there
is this special and decisive argument with regard to their right to vote for
members of Congress. The Constitution, as we have seen, gives the right
to the people of the State, with only this limitation — that the electors for
members of Congress shall have the qualifications requisite for electors for
the most numerous branch of the State legislature. The right is absolute,
except that the State may fix the "qualifications." Now, what is a qualifi-
cation ? Sex is not one. A qualification is something that may be acquired,
as a certain age, a certain time of residence, ability to read, etc. A certain
height of stature could not be, a certain color of the eyes could not be.
Nothing natural and unchangeable could be. So sex can not be. The State,
therefore, in making sex a disqualification has attempted that which it had
no power to do, and its action is, so far, void.
If, then, as is claimed, the United States may step in and punish a citizen
of the United States for voting illegally for members of Congress, as in the
case of Susan B. Anthony, because the State had limited the voting privilege
to male citizens, surely the United States may much more be called upon to
step in and protect the right of all the people of every State, to become
electors of members of Congress, including the women people as well as the
20
298 International Council of Women.
men people. Do you not see it, friends? Members of the House of Rep-
resentatives shall be chosen by the " people of the several States," and yet
when one of these people — being an honest, law-abiding, tax-paying woman,
after consulting the best lawyer in her city, and being duly registered and
sworn in as an elector — puts her ballot in the box for a member of Congress,
the United States Government, by marshal and commissioner, seizes her,
and, by a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, condemns her
to a fine and costs of prosecution, on the ground that the State of New York
has a right to disfranchise half its citizens, they being guilty only of being
women, and in the face of the express provision of this article that the
people of every State shall elect the members of Congress of that State.
And I may as well finish what I have to say of Miss Anthony's trial just
here, because Judge Hunt's decision against her, was based partly on this
very article, and it is time that his interpretation of it and the consequences
thereof were fully made known.
Judge Hunt decided that the right of voting is a " right or privilege aris-
ing under the constitution of the State, and not of the United States," and
this in the face of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, ratified by
three-fourths of the States, and thereby made as much the law of the land as
any other part of the United States Constitution. The Fourteenth reads:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein
they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
law." This amendment was supposed to cover the whole ground of enfran-
chising the black men, made free by the Thirteenth Amendment, and it ought
to have been sufficient. But the white men of the South were naturally
averse to seeing black men just out of slavery the chief rulers of their States,
they being recently disfranchised themselves for rebellion, and they made it
so difficult for black men to vote that the Republican party, which was abso-
lutely dependent upon their votes for continuance in power, determined to
strengthen the right of black men to vote by another amendment, and
so passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which reads : " The right of citizens
of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude. Congress shall have power to enforce this act by appropriate
legislation."
Here we have the Constitution of the United States saying in plainest
terms " that all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdic-
tion thereof are citizens, not only of the United States, but of the State
wherein they reside ; and that the right of citizens to vote shall not be de-
Political Conditions. 299
nied by any State; and yet a judge of the Supreme Court of the United
States, declares, from the bench that the citizen's right to vote comes from the
State alone, and hence that a State may disfranchise any of its citizens except
black men, these alone being protected from disfranchisement by the latter
clause of the Fifteenth Amendment, " on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude." Thus, you perceive, a majority of present voters in
any State may disfranchise every other voter who has gray hair or blue eyes,
or any physical peculiarity but a black skin ; may disfranchise all men over
forty years of age, or all men worth less than $50,000, or all men of the
temperance party, or the labor party, or the Republican or Democratic par-
ties; in short, every one but themselves, the then majority of voters; and
Judge Hunt accepted this conclusion and declared that this is the constitu-
tional law of the United States, as interpreted by him in his capacity of judge
of the Supreme Court of the United States.
He did this because he was so imbued with the theory of State rights as
against national rights, and so filled with prejudice against the rights of
women in government, that he was determined to interpret these amendments
in behalf of black men alone, although the wording of them leaves no room
for question that they embrace all the people of the United States, accord-
ing to the meaning and intent of that word "people," in all the previous
articles of the national Constitution.
And yet this is but half, and the least criminal half, of his unjust decision
in the case of Miss Anthony. Not content with misinterpreting the law of
the United States by proclaiming, that the right to vote of every citizen but
black citizens, was subject to loss at the pleasure of a bare majority of voters,
he denied to her the right of trial by jury — that is, he decided the case
himself, and caused the clerk of the court to record the verdict of guilty,
without reference to the jury empaneled for the case, who had been sitting
all through the trial to hear the case, and who alone were legally competent
to bring in a verdict upon it. And when Miss Anthony's counsel asked
leave to address the jury he was denied ; and when he asked that the jury
be polled — that is, that each member might be asked by name if this was his
verdict, he was again denied, and Judge Hunt then instructed the clerk to take
the verdict, and the clerk said, in the usual form: "Gentlemen of the jury,
hearken to the verdict as the court hath recorded it. You say you find the
defendant guilty of the offense charged. So say you" all."
No response was made by the jury, either by word or sign. They had not
consulted together in their seats or otherwise. None of them had spoken
a word. Nor had they been asked whether they had or had not agreed upon
a verdict. No juror spoke a word during the trial from the time they were
impaneled to the time of the discharge, and as soon as the judge refused
to poll the jury, he said: " Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharged,"
and the jurors left the box, and one of them declared to a bystander that
300 International Council of Women.
"guilty " was not his verdict, neither was it the verdict of the other eleven.
■" Could I have spoken," said he, " I should have answered ' not guilty,'
and men in that jury-box would have sustained me." It seems, friends, that
he and the other jurors, had a right to speak and to demand that the verdict
be submitted to the jury. But they did not understand their rights in this
respect, and were naturally in awe of a judge of the Supreme Court of the
United States, and the judge must have known that they would be awed, or
he would not have dared thus to transgress the ordinary rules of law. And
for this act he deserved impeachment, and had the accused been a foreign-
born, though naturalized, citizen of the United States on trial for fraudulent
voting, which is a criminal offense, you know, punishable by heavy fine and
imprisonment, and had he been thus denied a verdict from the jury, the press
would have rung out the injustice all over the land. And this simply because
this man, being an acknowledged voter, would have had a political party be-
hind him, whose interest it was to protect him and every other citizen,
whether free-born or naturalized, in his right to vote.
Thus you see how in this right to vote, is wrapped up the great volume of
our cherished rights. Judge Hunt began with denying to women their citi-
zens' right to vote, and, by an easy step, passed on to denying that right
regarded most sacred of all — the right of trial by jury. And the crime of
Judge Hunt in refusing Miss Anthony her right of trial by jury was all
the greater, because there was no appeal from his court to any higher one,
as is customary in all our other courts. A circuit court judge may review
his own decision, but there is no appeal from his final decision, and the
judge refused even to reconsider the case, though strenuously urged to do so
by Judge Selden, the counsel.
And now permit me to give you briefly the argument of woman's right to
vote in our State elections as well as national, in consequence of the passage
of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the
United States. It is simply this : Before the war, and reconstruction acts
following it, the word "citizen" was not fully defined, some jurists con-
tending that all persons owing allegiance to the Government and protected
by it were properly citizens ; and others, that only those who were accred-
ited legal voters could properly be called citizens. Then, when the Repub-
lican party desired to enfranchise the black men, partly for the sake of secur-
ing their votes (I do not say that this was the sole motive) in the next Pres-
idential election, it was not willing to deface the national Constitution by
such words as these : "All black men, formerly slaves, are citizens of the
United States ;" and, " No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of black men ;" and again, " The right
of black citizens of the United States to vote shall not bedenied or abridged
by any State," and, therefore, it was driven to the annunciation of a general
principle of citizenship, applicable to all persons at all times, and this was
Political Conditions. 301
the principle, that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and
of the State wherein they reside." This is a grand assertion, in harmony,
as I have already shown, with the spirit and letter of the whole Constitution
of the United States and the Declaration of Independence, and, like them,
it embraced all women as well as all men, and secured to all women no less
than all men, their right to vote. Mark the words "secure" and "right to
vote." Our claim is that the original Constitution gave no right to vole to
any man or woman, but it simply secured to every man and woman his or
her original, natural right to govern himself or herself, except so far as he or
she should delegate this right to others, for purposes of civil life and national
action. And these amendments, following the spirit of the Constitution in
preamble and articles, declare that all persons are citizens, and that the
citizen's right to vote shall not be abridged by any State. Can anything be
plainer than that woman, being a " person," is a citizen, and, being a cit-
izen, has the citizen's right to vote?
Formerly each State had charge of its own elections and the United
States had no right to interfere with them in any State, even though the
election was for national officers, but in the eagerness of the Republican
party to enforce the amendments which would bring black votes to their
aid, they gave a new power to Congress in this section : " Congress shall
have the power to enforce this article," viz., " The right of citizens of the
United States to vote without denial on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude." And Congress passed what is called the Enforce-
ment Act of 1870, which is entitled " An act to enforce the right of citi-
zens of the United States to vote in the several States of the Union."
General terms, again, you perceive ; not an act to enforce the right of the
black man to vote in the several States of the Union, but Of all citizens of
the United States. And the first eighteen clauses of the act are very minute
in their provisions for the protection of these black men, whose votes were
wanted ; and then, there was a nineteenth clause that was intended solely to
hinder from voting, white rebel men who had been disfranchised during the
war, and this clause reads thus: "If at any election for representative or
delegate in Congress of the United States, any person shall vote without
having a lawful right to vote, every such person shall be deemed guilty of a
crime, and shall for such crime be liable to prosecution in any court of the
United States of competent jurisdiction, and on conviction thereof shall be
punished by a fine not exceeding $500, or by a term of imprisonment not
exceeding three years, or both, in the discretion of the court, and shall pay
the costs of prosecution."
And under this clause of the Enforcement Act of 1870, which was made
expressly to punish white male rebel citizens for voting, after they had been
disfranchised for rebellion, Judge Hunt condemned Susan B. Anthony for
302 International Council of Women.
the crime of voting " without having a lawful right to vote." This woman,
the blackest of black Republicans, who had, with others like herself, fur-
nished Mr. Sumner with half his ammunition, in the shape of petitions from
hundreds of thousands of citizens in behalf of the black man — names
which it is an enormous task to collect, but without which all appeals to
Congress to do justice would have been in vain — this woman, who had vio-
lated the infamous fugitive slave law every time, by giving the cup of cold
water to the panting fugitive and speeding him on his way to free soil in
Canada — she, thank God! of all women in this land, was selected by the
Government of the United States to be prosecuted, dragged from one court to
another, harassed during the space of nearly a year, tried at last in another city
than her own and fined for the crime of voting for the President of the United
States and a member of Congress, under an act entitled "An act to enforce
the right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of this
Union," and under a clause of that act that made it a crime for a rebel to
vote, because he had been deprived of his citizen's right to vote, by special
act of Congress, in consequence of his crime of rebellion.
And, friends, do you not know that no citizen can be lawfully disfran-
chised, either by State or nation, except for crime or rebellion, and then only
by the judgment of his peers ? But in this case of Miss Anthony, she was
punished, not only as if she had been guilty of crime or rebellion, or both,
but she was, so far as the unjust judgment of the court could doit, disfranchised
for evermore, and that without the judgment of her peers in a double sense —
for she was not only denied the verdict of the male jury sitting there on
purpose to render their verdict, but a jury of her peers she could not have,
nor can any woman, so long as women are denied the right to vote and to sit
upon a jury. And in the case of Miss Anthony's jury, had they been
allowed to render a verdict, it would have been a verdict not of her peers,
but of her political superiors, and this would have been true of them, how-
ever ignorant or uneducated they were; whether black men or white, drunk
or sober, every man of them was her sovereign, with power not only to make
but to administer the laws under which she is compelled to live.
Do you ask, why recount this trial and so asperse the character of a learned
and otherwise upright judge? I answer, because his decision has become a
precedent, and on this account we have been compelled to relinquish 'tem-
porarily, at least, our high vantage-ground of constitutional guarantees, and
resort to the advocacy of an amendment to the national and State constitu-
tions, measures alike dishonoring to the constitutions and to the womanhood
of the country.
We believe, with a distinguished Senator from my own State, whom I have
been proud to claim as a personal friend for many years, that " Our Govern-
ment involves a great deal of labor for us. -Liberty is a burden, not a
release,' a French philosopher has said. If you want ease, appoint as good a
Political Conditions. 303
king as you can find, give him good counsellors, and tell them to save you
all trouble ; you will have ease ; but if you desire real freedom, it means
labor. The twelve million sovereigns of this country are bound each to
know something of the responsibility that is constantly taught in caucus,
town-meetings, etc. The caucus should be only a meeting of honest citizens
to see what had best to be done." And as there are thousands of women
quite ready to assume this responsibility, of seeing what had best be done in
the primary meetings of all the cities and villages of our land, and thousands
more who will do it conscientiously, though reluctantly, when called to it by
the invitation of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, we desire, most
earnestly, that the approaching second century of male legislation, should wit-
ness a reversal of this unjust decision of Judge Hunt, and proclaim the free-
dom and responsibility of all the citizens of these United States. Let our
brothers, then, consecrate this opening century of constitutional government,
by an act of justice that shall be a supreme one, and that shall make our
national Constitution forever a charter of the highest human rights.
I said in the beginning that women ought to exercise their constitutional
right to vote, and men ought to help them to do so by every means in their
power. And this for two reasons : (i.) Because questions of legislation are
largely questions of morals, and men alone are incompetent to deal with the
morals of a community, however wise they may be, and however honest in
their desire to promote the general welfare. Education, secular and religious,
temperance, chastity, police regulations, penal institutions and reformatories
— who has more interest than women in all these questions, and more wisdom
to bring to their solution? (z.) There can be no true manhood nor true
womanhood when men rule and women merely obey. Every mother in her
home, every teacher in our public schools is at a discount to-day, because of
her political subordination. Every boy knows this, and, consciously or un-
consciously, acts accordingly.
True political economy, which is only another name for the science of
government, can never be taught until women are intelligent and responsible
thinkers upon the subject, equally with men, and are able to carry out their
convictions at the ballot-box. Hence, I repeat, it is the plain duty of every
woman to desire to vote, and of every man to remove the obstacles in her way.
I will only answer one objection. It is said, " We have too many voters
already. It is unjust, to be sure, to exclude all women on this account, but
we can not help it. Men will not consent to be disfranchised, so we must
make amends for our mistake in inviting all men to vote, by forbidding all
women." This is too much like Charles Lamb, who, being reproved for going
so late to his desk in the morning, said he made it up by going home early in
the afternoon. But have we too many voters? In other words, is the doc-
trine of the fathers of this republic an unsound one, that personal liberty
and personal responsibility are the only foundations of integrity, whether in
304 International Council of Women.
the individual or the nation ? No, it is not unsound. It is just as true to-day
as it was at Sinai and Plymouth Rock.
" Thou shalt " and "we will " reads the Decalogue and the covenant of that
old-time Jewish people, and thus in spirit, speak the Constitution of the United
States and the Declaration of Independence : it is a grand and wholesome
doctrine, and one we can not afford to lose sight of for a moment. But those
do lose sight of it, who say we have too many voters already. No, we have
not too many. On the contrary, to take away this ballot, even from the ig-
norant and perverse, is to invite discontent, social disturbances, and crime.
The restraints and benedictions of this little white symbol are so silent, yet
so genial, so atmospheric, so like the snowflakes that come down to guard the
slumbering forces of the earth and prepare them for springing into bud, blos-
som, and fruit in due season, that few recognize the divine alchemy, and many
impatient souls are saying we are on the wrong path — the Old World was
right — the government of the few is safe ; the wise, the rich, should rule ;
the ignorant, the poor, should serve. But God, sitting between the eterni-
ties, has said otherwise, and we of this land are foreordained to prove
his word just and true. And we will prove it, by inviting every new-
comer to share our liberties so dearly bought, and our responsibilities now
grown so heavy that the shoulders which bear them are staggering under
their weight ; that by the joys of freedom and the burdens of responsibility
they, with us, may grow into the stature of perfect men, and our country
realize at last the dreams of the great souls who, " appealing to the Supreme
Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions," did " ordain and
establish the Constitution for the United States of America" — the grandest
charter of human rights that the world has yet conceived.
Miss Anthony. I am happy to present to you Mrs. Judith Ellen Foster,
of the law firm of "Foster and Foster," Clinton, Iowa, who is not only
an equal member of the firm, but also a very successful lawyer, I am glad to
say.
WOMEN IN POLITICS.
Mrs. Foster. Woman is in politics, and the only unanswered question
is, What relation shall she hold to politics and what will be the result of that
relation with all it involves ? Shall women appear in political life by mere
accident of birth, as does Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and
Empress of India; or by marriage, as Victoria, Empress of Germany; or by
royal favor and caprice, as did the " ladies of the court " in the days of im-
perial France ? Shall women labor to sustain the government, as" do the Prim-
rose Dames, and for governmental reform, as do the Women's Liberal Asso-
ciations of England, through organizations which do every sort of honest
political work except to vote? Shall they hold the position of supplicants,
as American women do who seek governmental protection for temperance,
for education, for philanthropy, for industrial equality? Shall women seek
Political Conditions. 305
to conserve every purpose of good government, by every means in their
power, and still lack the one means of crystallizing their love into law,
their labor into government ? Or shall all political disabilities be removed
from all women who possess constitutional qualifications to which all citizens
may attain? Accepting the Declaration of Independence as containing the
essential equities of civil government, and the Golden Rule as the standard of
individual obligation, the logical conclusion is irresistible, that all political
disabilities imposed upon women by constitutional and statutory law are in
violation of nineteenth-century civilization. * * *
In social, educational, and industrial emancipation, woman's present
achievements have realized the largest expectations of enthusiasts. Her
political enfranchisements shall bring like realizations. Mr. Parnell, that
great Irish patriot, said, a few days ago, in the House of Commons, that
England's attempted justice to Ireland in the settlement of the land question
had always been too late. Men of America, we see the revolutions going on
about us — revolutions social, industrial, political. The practical abnegation
of self-government, and the duties of citizenship by the so-called better
classes, the aggressiveness of capital, the distractions of labor, and the saloon
in politics — these known and unknown forces are bringing a crisis in our
national life, full of terrible peril to the Anglo-Saxon race; aye, to every race
everywhere. We do not threaten revolution because we bear about with us
this sense of injustice to ourselves and danger to the State. We have no
separate interests which can be taken out of and guarded apart from the
country and the age we live in. Humanity is a unit in origin and destiny ;
our national life is a body of many members, and is affected by the health
of every part.
Gentlemen, we do not threaten. We have no interest that can be taken
out of the body politic and cared for by itself. We must share with you
the evils of bad government as well as the blessings of good government.
Somebody writing in a New York paper, of a magnificent address which
had been presented in this city by that peerless orator, Frances E. Willard.
said that she, in pleading for woman's ballot, seemed to forget that women
must fight if they would vote. I wondered from whence that man came. I
wondered if he thought his objection was an original one. I wondered what
was the name he bore. For I remember — we all have remembered — during
these last few weeks how our civilization differs from that of all the world.
As we have waited — as we did wait — in the sick chamber of the great
Emperor William, as we watched by his bedside, as we watched by his bier with
the multitudes, as we thought of the life of the great man extending through
the century from the days of Napoleon, when he was consecrated to his life by
his mother, the great Queen Louise, consecrated out of the agony of her
soul, because Napoleon had so ruthlessly trampled on her kingdom, we
see that the distinguishing feature of his reign was the dominance of
306 International Council of Women.
military power. It was force, force, force. He held in his mighty grip a
people who were subjects, not citizens. And we know that to-night, in Eu-
rope, there are four millions of armed men who walk back and forth and
who do military service; and we know that what they call a strong govern-
ment, depends upon force of arms. And when we tell them about our
system, as I did last summer, and explained to them that we had less
than 25,000 men in our standing army; when I spoke of our great ter-
ritory, of our Atlantic coast, of our Pacific coast, where the waters come
in over the golden sand, they said : " But what would you do if anything
should happen?" I said: "I am sure I don't know what we would
do; only I am sure nothing will happen." Why, our weakness is our
strength. But why; why are we safe? It is because of the dominance
of moral power in this land of ours. It is because we everywhere have
a standing army which would come to the rescue if any assault were
made. We know the history of the wars of the past; we know the help that
came from the forge, the farm, the plow, and the school-room; yes, and
from the sacred desk, and we know it would come again, if need be; but it
shall never need be. Why ? Because we have set up moral power here as
against mere military power, and so I say to you to-night, dear friends, that
the lady who presides over this meeting, who has for so many years stood at
the head of this great movement, so I say to you that the lady who presides over
the great temperance movement of this country, I say that these two women
are a moral power in this nation, and are mightier than they would be if they
led armies. Why? Because it is moral power that counts. * * *
Miss Anthony. I now have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Harriet H.
Robinson, of Massachusetts, member of the Executive Committee of the
National Woman Suffrage Association.
POLITICAL PARTIES AND WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
Mrs. Robinson. In discussing the question of political conditions I always
feel, so far as women are concerned, that we have no story to tell, so little
have we gained after these forty years of struggle. I do not wish to ignore
the small rights which are allowed to women in some of the States and Ter-
ritories, but I propose to discuss the question in a broader sense and speak
of woman's status in the parties which represent the leading thought in
American politics. We see before us to-day the two dominant parties pre-
paring for the coming political campaign, and we hear a great deal about the
"sovereignty of the people," the "rights of the people," and that the
"American people will not tolerate class domination." We read all this
and it sounds well. We agree with it. But when we, the women, stop to
think whose "rights" are discussed; who the people are whose " sover-
eignty must be maintained ;" who " will not tolerate class domination ;" we
say: " This does not mean us ; for, though we are of the people, we have
no sovereign rights ; we are women, therefore we must tolerate class domi-
nation."
Political Conditions. 307
These political parties, when they meet in convention, pass high-sounding
resolutions on all sorts of questions — tariff reform, the fisheries, an honest
and just ballot, etc., but not one word to establish or even suggest that the
political rights of one-half the citizens of the United States ought to be con-
sidered. " We, the people," these men call themselves, just as if there was
not a woman in the land interested in what they say or understood what
they were doing. But they go on ignoring us in their conventions and in
their resolutions, just as much as they did before we had begun to vote at
all, or were declared by the Supreme Court to be citizens.
There was a time when the Republican party was called, and was, the
party of freedom ; but since it no longer gives substantial aid to the leading
reforms of the day it deserves that title no longer ; for a party, no more
than a person, can live on what it has done, but must depend on what it is
doing. It had the chance to keep its record bright in 1872, when it advo-
cated woman suffrage ; but it failed to seize it, went back on its principles,
and thus its record as the party of reform, ended. It had done a great and
noble work for human freedom, and here was another opportunity given it
to continue its work. The woman-suffrage cause was waiting to be recog-
nized, prepared, from the foundation of the world, to follow in logical
sequence directly upon the emancipation of the black man.
Charles Sumner, in a letter to W. S. Robinson, " Warrington," the well-
known "Our Correspondent " of the Springfield Republican (never before
published), gives his idea of the duty of Republicans in securing the rights
of all classes of citizens. He writes :
"27th April, '71.
" My Dear Robinson: Long before the war I insisted that our Constitution should
be interpreted always for freedom, whereas it was interpreted always for slavery.
Such interpretation would be according to reason, just rules, and the Declaration of
Independence. And when slavery disappeared I insisted that the great impediment
was removed, and that the new life was to begin. * * * I was for the centrali-
zation of liberty, the upholding of human rights. Logically and constitutionally it
seems to me that the nation should be able to protect and secure these everywhere
with uniform power, so that they shall be the same everywhere. This is my doc-
trine. I mean to die by it. This interpretation is the great victory after the war.
(Signed) " Charles Sumner."
If the Republican party, after 1872, had continued to advocate the eman-
cipation of the women of the country, the equal rights of all American citi-
zens— white women as well as black men, black women as well as black
men — this would have been its " victory after the war." If it had followed
the teachings of its lost leader, this would have made it something more than
the " G. O. P." It would be the ever new, the ever-living party of liberty.
But it is as much behind the times on questions of reform, woman's suf-
frage, labor, prohibition, and tariff, as was the Democratic party of forty
years ago on the anti-slavery question. It is hide-bound and can not move
308 International Council of Women.
beyond a certain point, and is no longer strong enough to take on a new
issue, or carry a reform principle. * * *
The Jeffersonian Democrats were a reform party, but the present Demo-
cratic party has made no record for itself since the war, nor for some time
before.
What claim has the Prohibition party to the support of the suffragists?
It is a well-known fact that women have helped this party, almost as much as
they have the Republican party. In the years when there was no doubt as to
the election of the Republican candidates, the prohibitory vote has been quite
respectable. That is, those men vote for their own candidates when it is of
no use; but when the time comes that they could, by voting their own ticket,
show the great parties that they are a power to be both feared and respected,
they make a stampede for the Republican camp. * * *
The temperance women are learning that they can not trust a party that
does not vote at all times for its own candidates, and are learning, that they
must demand the ballot for themselves in order to secure legislation for the
temperance cause ; that they need the full right of suffrage so that they can
carry constitutional prohibition without the help of men, who can be fright-
tened or persuaded into abandoning their own cause. Women will always
have "leave to withdraw " as long as they trust to men to do their voting
for them.
And there is no more hope for women in the Henry George, or Labor
parties ; so soon as the test elections come, their constituents as inevitably
rush back to their old Democratic camp.
In speaking of the two dominant parties, I do not forget that there are
individual members who believe in and work for the political emancipation
of women, but they can not go outside of party lines. They are Repub-
licans, Democrats — first, last, and always — and what there is left, after doing
their duty as party men, they give to the suffrage cause. They try to help
us, I know, and they make every effort to get resolutions into party plat-
forms, but as yet they have no power to change the policy or make our
reform an issue within party lines. The fact is, the woman's cause is always
in the way of politicians. They seem to be afraid of it ; afraid to meet
such a great moral issue as they know it to be. It seems to them a sort of
unknown quantity — a bete noir — or, like Tennyson's "little speck in garnered
fruit," to be quietly removed before my lord eats his apple. And these
politicians act as if they did not know which way to turn when the woman
question is brought to their notice. They suggest every remedy but the
right one. They shrink at the idea of giving to the women of the
country the same rights which they themselves enjoy. It is claimed that
they hesitate, because they will not know what to do with us, or how
to manage such a large "element" (as they call us) entering into politics
all at once. But do not fear, gentlemen ! We do not want you to do any-
Political Conditions. 309
thing with us, nor yet try to manage us. Make us free — that is all we ask —
and we will take care of ourselves ! * * *
Since such is the attitude of political parties, what should be the position
of women themselves in regard to them? Shall they be Republican, Demo-
crat, Prohibitionist, Labor Party? For my own part, I say belong to
none of them, for, until such time as I have the right to vote there is no
legitimate place for me in any party. * * *
Old conditions of society are passing away. Nations have been scat-
tered, but God has gathered their fragments together, and here on Amer-
ican soil is to be tried the experiment of self-government by and for the
people. And whether it succeeds sooner or later, depends on the leaders,
who hold in their hands the power to guide the people aright. * * *
Miss Anthony. Mrs. Martha A. Everett, of Massachusetts, delegate of
the School Suffrage Association, will now speak to us.
SCHOOL SUFFRAGE IN MASSACHUSETTS.
Mrs. Everett. I have felt ever since these meetings began as if it was a
large Thanksgiving party, a real old-fashioned New England Thanksgiving,
when all the children and grandchildren had been invited home and were
having a glorious feast and good time with their parents, grandparents,
uncles, aunts, and cousins, and were telling what each had been doing in
their days of separation.
Since 1874 no person in Massachusetts has been deemed ineligible, by rea-
son of sex, to serve upon a school committee. The legislature of 1879, passed
an act relative to the right of women to vote for school committee. In order
to exercise the right of voting, a woman must have paid a tax in the com-
monwealth within two years, must have resided within the State one year,
and in the city or town in which she proposes to vote, six months. The tax
may have been paid by herself on demand of the assessors, or may have been
paid by a parent, guardian, or trustee on her account. A woman who holds
her receipted tax-bill must go with it to the registrar, who, after ascertaining
that she has the proper qualifications of age, residence, and education, must
put her name on the list of qualified voters. Being once registered, she is
not obliged to register again as long as these conditions remain unchanged.
If a woman has not already paid a tax, she must take measures to do so if
she wishes to vote. For this purpose, she must apply in writing to the
assessors of her city or town, on or before the first day of October, express-
ing her wish to be assessed for her poll, and give a list of her estate — real and
personal — which is not exempt from taxation. She will then be assessed for
her poll, not exceeding fifty cents, and for her estate she must then pay her
tax and register as other women do who have paid taxes. Women who have
thus paid taxes and registered have a right to vote for members of the school
committee in Massachusetts. This does not give us the whole loaf, but as
our brothers only offer a slice, we accept rather than to go without a crumb.
310 International Council of Women.
At a meeting of registered women held in the city of Boston in 1880, a com-
mittee was appointed, with Miss Abby W. May as president, to take charge
of school suffrage throughout the State. The plan of work adopted was to
appoint for each county in the State one or more resident managers, who
shall stimulate and urge the women to take an active and intelligent
interest in the schools and use their right of suffrage to secure good boards
of government for them. The result would be that the associate man-
agers will become thoroughly acquainted with the condition of school affairs
in every town and village in the State. They will keep the central com-
mittee in Boston fully informed of affairs in their respective counties.
This work has been undertaken with zeal, and the best spirit in many places.
The interest manifested by women in nominations for .members of school
boards, has often been the means of defeating men unfit for the place. The
foundation principle of the work is "the best interests of the schools."
The responsibility of the ballot has offered a great incentive to women to
gain the intelligence needed to make their interest wise as well as earnest, in
making our public schools worthy to receive and educate children from the
best homes. What can we do by our votes for the good of the schools ?
This question may be asked by some who are either indifferent to the subject
or who may wish to know their duty in the matter. If the schools in a town
or city are below the average, they are so either because the committee are
not equal to the work of making them good, or because public sentiment will
not sustain the committee in their efforts for improvement.
But in either case women help make public sentiment, and are responsi-
ble for whatever may be wrong in it, if they do not use their influence to
make it what it should be. If the school committees are competent, women
should show that they recognize and appreciate the efforts to improve the
schools, by increasing the majority at an election, by the votes of all the
earnest women in the State. Teachers are entitled to a recognition by all
the inhabitants of the town. Oftentimes they are young, with good ability
and fair training, but lacking experience, which is of the utmost importance
in their work. Women have it in their power to be of great strength and
support to teachers of this class.
It may be a criticism, a suggestion, a word of encouragement that will
lighten the burden that weighs heavily upon every one who elevates the
profession of teaching to where it belongs. The women of every city
and town should see to it, that one woman or more is chosen on the
school committee. There are now in Massachusetts more than one hundred
women serving upon school boards. Our worthy Secretary of the State
Board of Education, Mrs. Dickenson, says that, " while men are chosen
for many reasons, women are chosen for solid merit, for the high
order of service they render." They observe the habits and condition of
the children, and are skilled to invent ways of improvement. They notice
Political Conditions. 311
the relations existing between teachers and pupils, and encourage the use of
the highest principles in school government. They are ever watchful over
the health and comfort of the teacher and school-children committed to
their care. This is especially true of their forethought for the teachers and
pupils in the primary grades, where the nervous strain on the teachers is
most intense. There are some women in every town who have the educa-
tion, experience, and leisure that render them peculiarly fitted to occupy an
important place in directing the work in the public schools.
A large number of the public-school teachers are women, and a share of the
supervision of the schools should be placed under their direction. The
safety of the nation depends largely upon the management of our public
schools. As William von Humboldt stated the case, " Whatever we wish to
see introduced into the life of a nation, must first be introduced into its
schools." The school is a child of the State, the State declaring its love by
teaching the children how to make the most of themselves and the world
around them.
It has been said there are four things which the State should see that
its children have an opportunity to learn, viz., to think, to work, to behave,
and to love their country. These four are the corner-stones of the founda-
tion of our homes and the Union. Can women, can the mothers of this
nation, after building upon this foundation until our children are placed in
the public schools, can we sit quietly by and say we have no part in this
great school life? Shall we trust the formation of our child's character to
others and not give our own influence to brighten and refine it? Shall we,
by our indifference to duty, contribute to the triumph of evil over good?
Nay, rather let us go back to our homes with a renewed determination to take
part in this great struggle for the welfare of our schools, our homes, and the
nation we love so well, and never falter until the women of every State in
the Union are represented upon the school boards.
Miss Anthony. I now have the pleasure of introducing Rev. Annie Shaw.
Miss Shaw. You have all heard what school suffrage is in the State of
Massachusetts, and it isn't much of anything, for we have not school suffrage ;
we haven't anything but school committee suffrage, and that is a good way
from school suffrage.
When the law was passed giving us school committee suffrage I felt as old
and as large as my brother did when he was twenty-one ; and so I im-
mediately started with some of the ladies of my church to register. We
went out into the field to find a person to register our names, we hunted him
up and brought him in from the hayfield, and then we all stood along in a
row, like a lot of schcol-girls, waiting to take our oaths. The way they do
this in Massachusetts, they make us women swear to our property in order to
tax us. That isn't the way they do with men ; they tax them first and then
send in their bill and let them do the swearing afterwards. I had never been
312 International Council of Women.
taxed before for three reasons : being a Methodist preacher, nobody supposed
I had anything to tax, and nobody asked ire; and then again, having paid
the tax on the property I did own in the place where it was, we in Massa-
chusetts, by a double system, have to pay it over again, and I wouldn't pay
it anyhow ; and then again, I don't believe in taxation without representa-
tion, that is tyranny, and I never pay a cent of taxes unless I am obliged to.
Upon going there we women stood up in a little row, and took our little
oath in regard to property. My property yields me $105 a year. Out of
this enormous income I paid $22.50 tax! leaving me a large amount of
money to live on the rest of the year, you see. On the morning of the elec-
tion I did not know, as we lived in the country, when we were to vote for
school suffrage; so we went early. The way they do there, they stand in a
sort of line or procession, you know, as they do in our country places, and
vote first for one thing and then another ; so we stood there until our time
came. At nine o'clock in the morning we got our places; and presently
the men who were there began burning incense on the altar of liberty, and
the smoke began rising until by and by, along toward noon, we could
scarcely see across the house. We live in a seafaring place, where they
smoke red herring, and every one of us went through the process and know
how red herring feel when they are smoked through. At three o'clock our
time to vote for school committee came, and now, we thought to ourselves,
is our opportunity. Just as the time was announced the moderator said,
with great dignity : "I appoint three men to nominate a gentleman for school
committee." And they walked out and returned with the name of the
only man in town whom they could persuade to take the office. There was
no pay to the office, and in order to get a man to take it they had to talk
to him of George Washington and the Pilgrim Fathers and the Fourth of
July, and wave the flag there in his face for an hour. So they nominated
the only man they could persuade, and the moderator said : "I appoint
Captain Crowell to cast the ballot for the town." But I said, "Gentle-
men, I thought I was to vote; " but they said, "This is the way we
always do it." I said, "Yes, I know, but I have paid $22.50 tax; I
have been smoked done, and I want to be allowed to vote; may I not be
allowed to cast my vote ? " He said, " Ladies, we have no time to spare."
I said, " Gentlemen, I think I ought to vote, and I want to vote." " Very
well," said he, " if you must vote, vote for the town." But I said, " I can't
do that, gentlemen, because there are five other ladies here, who all want to
vote." And as I was talking, an old man, with a pipe in his mouth, snarled
out, " That's just the way ; just the way I knew it would be, just the way."
The moderator quieted them down after a little, and I said, " Gentlemen, I
insist upon voting; I came here to vote ; " and then I nominated one of the
ladies who was with me as my candidate for school committee, and then
immediately we began to buttonhole and every one began to vote, and every-
Political Conditions. 313
body began to dive to get a chance to vote for school committee ; and it
took us just three hours to vote. And then the old gentleman who was so
angry that the institutions of the fathers had been overturned immediately
mounted a chair, and, doubling up his fist, exclaimed, "If this is woman's
suffrage, I am agin it every time. Here we have spent three hours on the
school-house, when we needed it all on the herring brook."
So that is my voting ; that is the opportunity which we say we women
are not equal to grasp ! When the question of appropriations for schools
came up, there was a certain class of men who wanted to cut them down,
and I was asked to speak a word against it, and 1 said I would do it gladly;
but the moderator said : " The lady can not speak upon that subject." And
I said: " Why not ; I am entitled to vote on this subject? " And he said :
" No ; you don't vote on questions pertaining to schools ; it is only a ques-
tion pertaining to school committees" — and that is school suffrage ! And
men who never paid a dollar of tax, and men who never paid a dollar for
the town, voted to cut down that appropriation, but to increase the fund to
support the poor outside of the poor-house, knowing very well that the women
who paid the taxes would raise that fund. I said to the gentlemen : " Can't
you stop this?" and they said: " No, ladies; we can't stop this." I looked
up to see who it was, and I saw he was running for representative, and I
knew he couldn't stop it, because there were nine or ten vot :s involved
there. Finally I said : " Gentlemen, I can stop my part of it, because I will
not pay another cent of tax in Massachusetts while I live." He said: "You
can't help it ; that is what school suffrage does for women in Massachusetts.
They register and swear to their property, and we know what they have and
we tax them after." Said I : " Gentlemen, you will never tax me again in
Massachusetts." They laughed at me and said I could not help it ; but I
could. I happened to be my own master, so the next day I put my prop-
erty in such a shape that it has never been taxed in Massachusetts since, and
it never will be taxed there if I live there until the angel Gabriel blows the
last trumpet. It costs me more not to pay the tax than it would to pay it,
and my friends say: "You are squandering your money." I know I am
squandering my money, but if I have any money to squander I want to do
it. That is my experience on school suffrage in Massachusetts.
Now, do you wonder that every woman in the State is not anxious to be
taxed and get nothing but the privilege to vote on such an unimportant mat-
ter as this, knowing full well that if she does vote it will amount to nothing
at all ?
Miss Anthony. Mrs. Anna Randall Diehl, of New York, will read a
poem entitled " The Flag at Half-Mast," written by Mrs. Helen Cook.
Mrs. Diehl. Just a year ago Miss Wolfe, one of the greatest philanthro-
pists in this country, was about to be buried. I went to the mayor of the
city of New York and respectfully asked him, if he would allow the flag to
21
314 International Council of Women.
float at half-mast on the City Hall on the day of her burial. He said it
could not be done. I said : " Did not the flags hang at half-mast when
Peter Cooper lay dead? " " Oh yes," said the mayor, "but Peter Cooper
had been an alderman." Then s-aid I : " The flags floated at half-mast for
Peter Cooper the alderman, and not for Peter Cooper the great philanthro-
pist." He admitted this to be so. Then, said I: "If Jaehne and the
other boodle aldermen who are now at Sing Sing were to die, trie flags on
the City Hall would have to float at half-mast for them?" And Mr.
Hewitt laughingly said that he supposed the friends would have a right to ask
it.
This poem was written by Mrs. Cook while the flags were floating at half-
mast at the time of the death of Peter Cooper.
THE FLAG AT HALF-MAST.
I sat and watched the flags to-day,
Some fluttering near, some far away ;
I saw them shrink and cling, as if
They could not float for weight of grief ;
And then the soothing April wind
Just kissed their hems with touch so kind,
They floated out, and I could see
They were all hung half-mast ! "Ah, me !
Some man is gone ! Never," I said,
" Were flags half-mast for woman dead."
And why, oh, world, I ask you why
That flag up there in the blue sky
That floats half-mast for men who have
Perchance no laurels for their grave ;
The flag for which my grandsires died,
Which was my honored mother's pride,
That gives its pledge of grief to-day,
Should not when I shall pass away—
My work all done, ray prayers all said,
Why not half-mast when I am dead ?
As soon as life's affections move,
Oh, does not woman learn to love
Each fold and stripe and every star
That symbols liberty, not war?
That flag for which the sons she gave
Have marched unflinching to the grave,
That hung half-mast when life had fled,
Yet ne'er would droop o'er her when dead.
If I fought battles all my life
With sin and wrong and human strife,
And gained my victories great and grand
As any soldier in the land,
Or taught the lowly how to live,
Gave to the poor all I could give,
Gave to life's wounded ones the wine
From the great healing Fount Divine ;
And turned the evil into good,
Blessing the world's sad brotherhood
With deeds of hand or heart or pen ;
Of suffering, dying, even like men,
No starry flag would float o'erhead
Half-mast that I was^ying dead !
Political Conditions. 315
And yet I love that flag so well ;
I love to watch it rise and swell,
Like a proud bird, whose tireless wings
Could soar through cloudland, as he sings
The song of Freedom with his might,
The Sons? of Justice, Truth and Right.
I watch its graceful rise and fall
In the soft air, and think of all
The women who have won a name
Immortal in the world of fame,
That brightens history's treasured page ;
The true of earth, the pure, the sage,
The gentle ones, the singers sweet,
The martyrs with their bleeding feet ;
Yet, had I yielded all I prized,
And even life had sacrificed,
And my poor name had led them all,
No flag half-mast would rise and fall
In the free heavens overhead,
That I was hushed and still and dead.
Miss Anthony. I should have announced at the beginning that the reason
the programme is not fully carried out this evening, is that Mrs. Neymann is
not able to leave her room at the Riggs House. I hope she will be with us
to-morrow evening.
Next I shall introduce to you Mrs. Laura M. Johns, president of the
State Association of Kansas, who will tell you about municipal suffrage there.
She has had the honor of casting a ballot at least once.
Mrs. Johns. Fellow-citizens : I say fellow-citizens, because I have arrived
at the dignity of citizenship — that is, I am a fractional citizen — that is, I
am partiallv enfranchised, as I have a municipal vote. I am asked to tell
you something about municipal suffrage in Kansas, and I want to tell you
that Kansas is the first State in the Union to confer this honor upon women.
If I were not so very much afraid of this great audience before me and
this other great audience at my back, I should tell you a great deal about it.
I should like very much, indeed, to tell you how at that first election in.
which women participated the well-worn, old fogy objections about woman
suffrage died and were buried and no psalm tunes were sung at the funeraL
You see the people, even in Kansas, had talked about women as if they were
full of frozen wickedness, and as if, when they got near enough to the ballot-
box to cast a ballot, it would be like Baron Munchausen's trumpeter, whose
trumpet was full of wicked tunes, and the weather was so cold that they
froze up; but when it got warm the contents of the trumpet melted and all
those wicked tunes" came out ; so they all talked as if they thought all women
were full of frozen wickedness, and that the frozen wickedness would melt
and come out of the ballot-box.
The old institutions were not overturned, society was not revolutionized ;
the dinners were cooked, buttons sewed on, babies' faces washed just the
same as before, and the regular spring house-cleaning came on with the same
cast-iron regularity and the same flavor of soapsuds and general air of deso-
316 International Council of Women.
lation ; and we bought our spring bonnets right after the election, and we
kept on buying pretty dresses with just as much money as we could get, and,
indeed, I think our husbands had hoped it would make some difference in
these things, especially when the bills came in. Those objections, you see,
have vanished. We have heard a great deal about them and are very tired
of them. Some of us voted with our husbands, and some of us voted against
our husbands ; but the majority of us — and I have been up and down and
about iu our State a great deal, and I think I know — I verily believe the
majority of us voted just as we pleased — just as nearly in accordance with
our own convictions, just as little influenced by our husbands and fathers and
brothers as men are by their brothers and fathers. And I know of only one case
of domestic jar that occurred. I know of only one man who whipped his wife,
and that man was in the habit of whipping his wife, anyhow. I noticed that
where difficulties occurred in families, it was always where difficulties were
in the habit of occurring. It has always been said that we would meet
such dreadful things at the polls. We were very much astonished to find
exactly the same men there that we met in the streets, in the post-offices,
in the opera house, and whom we do business with, and they behaved just
about the same on that day as they usually do. They doffed their hats and
smiled and bowed, and we smiled and bowed back to them. We thought
they were rather pleased to see us, and we were rather pleased to see them,
and those elections were the most orderly ever held in Kansas.
y^Now, as to the result of that election. Better men were elected to our
municipal offices. We didn't accomplish quite all we undertook to ; we
didn't always elect our candidate; our choice didn't always turn out to be
a wise one; but the determination to have purer city government did result in
better and safer government. And during this last year a fiercer war has been
waged against the vices which are sapping the life-blood of our nation. And
we don't lose a single bit of the chivalrous attention of the men, either.
They pick up our handkerchiefs just as they did before ; they carry our para-
sols just as they did before ; in fact, it is my honest conviction that we have
greater respect from men than we had previous to our enfranchisement,
because we are now not only women, but we are citizens besides.
As to the effect of this experiment upon the enforcement of our prohib-
itory law, I have this to say : that the officers elected by women's votes were
in nearly every instance in sympathy with the law, and did carefully aid in its
enforcement ; even when an anti-prohibition man was elected, the pressure
which we were able to bring to bear upon him by reason of our ballots,
resulted in compelling him to perform his duty. But when we didn't suc-
ceed in electing our choice we didn't sit down in our easy-chairs and say,
Peace ! Peace ! No. In the language of my friend, Miss Shaw (classical
language), we "tagged them up," we followed them with petitions; and
our protests and our petitions were not flung under the table and out of the
Political Conditions. 317
window, as formerly. We felt that our influence was greater than it ever had
been before. Attorney-General Bradford said to me, that in those large
cities, in which women took the least active interest in the election, there the
prohibitory law was openly defied, and his work was harder; but in those
large cities where women took an active part in the municipal election, the
prohibitory law was enforced, as well as other laws for decency, sobriety, and
good order.
And we have not repented that we voted. We are not only unrepentant,
but proud that we voted, and proud of the consequences — that everything
good and nothing evil has resulted from it. We have spent a little time since
that in circulating a petition for full suffrage, just a little time, and I
brought here thousands of names to that petition for full suffrage for women,
and since I have been here I have received more petitions with more thousands
of names on them.
Our second election occurs next week. I shall miss my vote, for which I
am very sorry, but in first and second-class cities it is an off-year election,
in which the men's vote is always smaller, and I presume it is to be expected
that the women's vote will be smaller. I left the State quite a little time
before the closing of the registration books, and from what I could learn then
the women in those cities where unimportant elections were to take place,
were registering in quite as large numbers as they did last year.
In the third-class cities, where the election is important, the women's
vote will be very much larger, because women are better prepared to vote.
During this year they have bought books and studied political economy.
They have studied elective methods and local governments, and municipal
governmental machinery, and they are very much more intelligent on the
matter than they were last year. I wager that the constitution of Kansas
has been better read this year by the women than in all the previous history
of the State. I was anxious to tell you about this, because when the returns
come in from our next election you will be comparing them with the num-
ber of women who voted last year, and if the number falls below 26,000 I
want you to remember that it is not because women have lost any interest, not
because they are repentant, but simply because the election is an unimpor-
tant one.
I believe the men in my State would vote for a constitutional amend-
ment giving women full suffrage; but we have a few men — a few — who are
opposed to it. Our senior Senator, perhaps you will remember, says that
the franchise should be extended no further, because we have reached the
danger-line now, and especially it should not be extended to women,
because women's virtues would do much more harm than their vices. We
would like to know which of our virtues it is that would do harm, whether it
be sobriety, or morality, or economy, or our love of decency and good
order ? And then, he says, if women are enfranchised it would add very
318 International Council of Women.
greatly to the mass of illiterate voters, which is very large now. Our
women of Kansas will not readily forgive our representative all this.
In the gloomy south transept of the Cathedral of Milan, there stands a
marvel of the sculptor's art. It is a marvelous exhibit of great knowledge of
human anatomy. It is a statue of St. Bartholomew. St. Bartholomew, you
will remember, was flayed alive. The artist has represented him with his
skin hanging loose over his arm, and the inscription says: " Not Praxiteles, but
Lyssipus made me." So the Senator, for whose ability I have profound
respect, whose power of invective is unparalleled, whenever he draws his
sword (except upon woman suffrage) and whose blows we must continue
to return, not exactly according to Scripture injunction ; I say when our
Senator stands in a state of innocuous desuetude, in the shades of political
retirement, with his epidermis stretched upon the barbed-wire fence of polit-
ical opinion in his State, the verdict of the world will be, " The women did
it." Now, as I have left two minutes of my time, it is but fair that I should
be allowed to introduce an ex-Kansas sister, whose work and enthusiasm
have been a great help in our movement — Mrs. Ellen S. Marble, of Minne-
apolis.
Mrs. Marble. I owe you an apology for taking one moment of Mrs.
Johns' time. But she is like her State, and always has enough time to
spare. And so I am glad to speak here to-night because I cast my first ballot
in the State of Kansas, and at their polls I fought my first political fight.
And I am glad to say we beat the opponents, who were fighting for whisky
and intemperance, while we were working for education and temperance.
To-night I bring as a sort of all-round representative of a good many
societies in Minneapolis, the greeting to the sisters who have spoken on
the various subjects which our societies represent. As State President of
the Minnesota Association for Suffrage, and as President of the Minneapolis
Suffrage Society, I bring my greetings to these noble mothers and sisters of
suffrage here. As Vice-President of the Central Woman's Christian Tem-
perance Union and Superintendent of their work in the State Reform School,
where two hundred boys and twenty-five girls are confined, I bring the greet-
ings of thirteen well-organized and actively-working unions of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, to our grand sisters of the White Ribbon. As
Secretary of our White Cross Society, I bring their greetings to our lovers of
social purity. As Secretary of our beautiful Maternity Hospital, I bring their
greetings to the philanthropists, and as a church member and a teacher in the
Sabbath-school I bring the greetings of our wide-awake Christian city to this
wide-awake Council.
I am asked why I am a suffragist. It is because I have a pure young
daughter, fourteen years of age, who, under our laws made by men, may sell
herself at ten, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen, but may not give herself in honor-
able marriage until she is eighteen. She may sell herself and I am powerless.
Political Conditions. 319
It is because I have a pure young son of sixteen, whom I have taught that
what is impure for his sister is impure for him ; that which she must avoid,
he must avoid ; that if she may not go upon the street at night, or into the
saloons by day, he ought not to; and it is because I want to save her and
want to save him, that I am here to attend this grand Council. I am for
suffrage now and forever, because I want better things for my son and better
things for my daughter than their father and mother have ever had.
Miss Anthony. Now we will close with Miss Willard.
Miss Willard. I don't know* as it will make me stand any better with
the ladies of the audience, and certainly it won't with the gentlemen, I sup-
pose, but, honestly, I always thought that, next to a wish I had to be a saint
some day, I really would like to be a politician.
I always found a fascination in politics, and I always reached out with a
perfectly democratic grip to get hold of a newspaper, and most of all liked
to turn to the editorials and see about the Whigs and Democrats, because
they were the ones when I was little ; and father was a Democrat, and I
think I got this from him. I think I am his true daughter in respect to this
desire. Some one has said history is only past politics, and politics is pres-
ent history. Philanthropy and politics, flowing now so wide apart, will flow
in a single stream as soon as philanthropists learn they can deal with the
sources as well as the results of crime, and as so in as the politicians discover
that their functions are assigned for none but philanthropic reasons. In the
test analysis the generalization of all that is good and true, will appear upon
the statute-books, and every good and perfect gift to humanity will, in a
republic, enter into the realm of law through the portals of politics.
Now, I was a farmer's daughter, and got this idea of politics through
father's and mother's talks together, as much as from the newspapers. I re-
member so well sitting by and listening to their talk, and mother was a very
motherly woman, and a tremendously potential politician, though I don't
think she ever knew it, and I only discovered it within the last fourteen
years. I never knew quite what was the matter with her, but she was born
to be a senator, and never got there. * * * Then my brother came to
be twenty-one, and we had gone around the pastures and prairies together ;
we had kept along in our ideas and ambitions ; we had studied the same
books and had the same general purposes. But lo and behold ! there came
a day when there was a separation. All of a sudden, just about that time, I
noticed by the family Bible record that he was twenty-one; it seemed to be
an arbitrary kind of figure, but he dashed off and got into the lumber wagon
with father, and the two of them, dressed in their best Sunday-go-to-meet-
ings, because we thought election day was a kind of Sabbath, went off together
and voted for John C. Fremont.
I stood at the window and watched them go off, simply and humbly, girl fash-
ion, very innocent of the world, and not a bit strong-minded; yet there came a
320 International Council of Women.
lump in my throat and I couldn't say a word. Finally I got voice to say," Don't
you think we ought to go with them, Mary? Don't you think it would be a good
thing for the country ?" I had nothing I paid taxes on, so I didn't think
about it being a good thing for my property ; but it was just this great idea
of what mother had taught, that the country was a kind of universal mother
to us, and that we ought to be loyal and faithful and true to it. And the
dear little girl standing beside me said : "Of course we ought to go with
them; don't I know that? Haven't I got sense enough for that? But you
mustn't tell about it, because they would say we were Shriekers." And so we
didn't say it, and didn't talk about it at all ; but we kept up that tremendous
thinking, just like the woman of old is said to have kept these things and pon-
dered them in her heart. And these things came into my mind and kept
growing on, growing out, and coming up into this age, this wonderful tran-
sition age, which goes from one regime into another ; this blessed, kindly,
tolerant age, which makes all so pleased with such a meeting as this, and
makes you so willing for it to go right on. This is the age which shows me
how much there might be for women in politics. I said to myself: " Here,
politics are sacred ; there isn't anything about it that a pure heart, serving
its kind, wouldn't like to have to do. Now can't we get politics out of the
company of thieves into which they have fallen ? Can not we get it out from
among the beasts of Ephesus? It is a kind of poor man that went down to
Jericho. Are we going to pass by on the other side or are we going to come,
like the good Samaritan, trying to get the women to talk about politics as a
home question, as something that women care for and are greatly interested
in ? ^ * ^
If you and your brothers say, We don't think it is because you women are
inferior that we don't want you to vote, but because you are too good and
nice and pure to come into politics, then I say to you : My friend, we don't
expect to leave politics as we find them ; not at all. You and your brothers,
all alone by yourselves and no women with you, have constructed this pool
that you talk about so much, and you don't admire, and you can't make it
any worse. You know into the witch's broth they pour all the ingredients
together. Now, you have all the ingredients there are, except women's votes.
Turn -them in ; it may be the branch of sweetness and cleaning it needs ;
can't make it any worse. So I want to say to my brothers, we are coming
in, as we believe, just as we should go into a bachelor's hall. We should take
along broom and dust-brushes and dust-pans, open the windows and ventilate
the place, and try to have a general " clarin " out, and that is exactly what
we want to do in Old Aunt Columbia's kitchen. Brother Jonathan hasn't kept
house there in an orderly and cleanly manner, and if ever a place needed
" clarin " out we think it is the kitchen of Uncle Sam. So we have made up
our minds and you will see us coming in, and nothing on this universal earth
will keep us out of it. It seems to me just the difference between the smoking-
Political Conditions. 321
car and the parlor-car ; in the smoking-car there are men alone, and in the
parlor-car men and women together. And how nice and wholesome it is in the
parlor-car ; and how everything but wholesome and nice it is in the smoking-
car. It seems to us women that every great thought must be incarnated, that
disembodied principles and disembodied spirits fare about equally well in this
work-a-day world ; that every principle seeks an incarnation through a
brain that can throw it out, through a hand that can cast its ballot into a box,
where a republic creates its own destiny. * * *
And so we believe in this magnificent scene of politics we may well enter,
because the weapons are not carnal, but spiritual. We believe that when coal
in the mine and not in the grate will warm you; when flour in the barrel
and not in the loaf will feed you, when wool on the sheep's back and
not woven into cloth wilL clothe you, then public sentiment that is lying
around loose and not gathered up through the electric battery of the ballot-
box, or sent tingling along the wires, will change the ways of men.
God made woman with her faculties, her traits, her way of looking at all great
questions from the highest to the lowest, and he made her to be a helpmeet
for man, and he made man to be a helpmeet for her ; he made them to stand
side by side, sun-crowned ; he made them to stand in a republic, as I believe,
bearing equally its magnificent burdens. I like to see how men are grandly
meeting the uprising of womanhood. I recognized, and all of us here do,
that it was our big brother man who said, Come and sit down beside me at
the banquet of Minerva. I recognize, and so do we all, that it was a man
that encouraged us when we made our first ventures ; that it is not with
any special purpose to keep us down that men do not let us enter into
politics, but that they are sort of considering it ; they are waiting for us to
be a little more anxious. They are waiting themselves to get sort of wonted
to the notion, and they are growing rapidly. The time is not distant, and
every man knows it who hears me.
But I do not forget that if we come, you will have to open the door, and,
therefore, I am anxious, in my own heart, to think only kindly of you. I
am most desirous to do you justice, and I want to tell you how we would
like to build the platform. For our widest plank, the solidest, and the safest
we will have right at the foundation of the new platform : " Peace on earth,
good-will to men."
Adjourned.
SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1888.
MORNING SESSION.
CONFERENCE OF THE PIONEERS.
Miss Anthony. In memory of Lucretia Mott, who, with Mrs. Stanton,
called the first convention forty years ago, and in accordance with the cus-
tom of Friends, the religious society of which Mrs. Mott was a member and
an approved minister, we will now observe a season of silence.
After a most impressive silence, the audience joined in sing-
ing the hymn by John G. Whittier, entitled " The Reformers."
Miss Anthony. I now present to you Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who,
with Lucretia Mott, called the first convention of women ever held in the
world. We promised you in the newspapers that we would have here the
table on which the first declaration of sentiments was written at Seneca Falls,
N. Y. But we found the possessors, the McClintocks, felt it a little too
precious to make the long journey. About that table sat Lucretia Mott,
Martha C. Wright, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Jane Hunt, Elizabeth
McClintock (now Phillips), and her mother, Mrs. Mary Ann McClintock.
Mrs. Stanton. In 1840 the World's Anti-Slavery Convention was called
in London. In harmony with the invitation, the Anti-Slavery Societies in
this country sent over several women as delegates .* I was not a delegate,
although I am often so recorded. My husband was, and that was the occa-
sion of our wedding trip to the Old World.
When we reached the convention we found there was a good deal of objec-
tion to women being received as delegates. It was something that had never
been heard of in England, women as delegates to a convention ; to sit as
councilors ; to have a vote in its proceedings. So the whole of the first day
was taken up in discussing the merits of that question. The objections were
chiefly drawn from the Bible.
At last it was decided that they could not enter the convention, but they
were very carefully concealed in some side seats hidden by a curtain, just as
you find the choirs, in some of our churches. Joseph Sturge occupied the
chair. Sitting near to Lucretia, I said to her: "Suppose now the spirit
should move you to speak, what could Joseph Sturge do, as a Quaker, in the
chair?" And said she : " Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
There is no danger of the Spirit moving me to speak here."
After listening to all the arguments, which were very insulting to women,
as I walked home, arm in arm, with Mrs. Mott, I said . 1" It seems to me
♦The women denied admission as delegates to that World's Anti-Slavery Convention were
Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Abby Kimber, Elizabeth Neal (Gay), Mary Grew, Philadelphia;
Ann Green Phillips, Emily Winslow, Abby Southwick, Boston.
Conference of the Pioneers. 823
high time to call a Woman's Convention. Here are these men from all
parts of the globe to discuss the rights of the negroes to freedom, and yet
they have no idea of any rights of freedom for women .'J Eight years after,
when I was living in the western part of the State of New York, Lucretia
Mott came out there to visit a sister, Mrs. Martha C. Wright. I then pro-
posed to her to call a convention. I had no more idea of what was involved
in calling a convention — no more idea how to do it, than to make a steam
engine. Nevertheless, I was determined to do it somehow, so half a dozen
of us assembled and decided that we would advertise, and we did advertise
in the county paper, occupying a space about as long as your finger, no
more. . We wrote a few letters to friends, and that was all the announce-
ment we gave.
The next point was a declaration. So we rummaged over all the reports of
all the different societies — peace, anti-slavery, and temperance — but none of
them were sufficiently pronounced for us ; they didn't touch the case. A
happy thought struck us — that our fathers' Declaration of Independence
was exactly suited to our needs. We read it carefully over, and found that
precisely the grievances that our fathers had to complain of against old King
George, we had to complain of against our ow.i Saxon fathers. So we
adopted the Declaration of Independence, and we were delighted with our
success, that we had a grand document, and were not obliged to write it
ourselves. So, gentlemen, your ancestors did that good thing for us. It was
equally satisfactory to find that we had the same number of grievances with
the fathers — exactly eighteen.
Then came^ the resolutions, and with them we had a great deal of diffi-
culty; however, the help of one or two gentlemen enabled us to succeed
in getting up a pretty good series; but when they were finished they were
not exactly what I wanted. I wanted to demand the right of suffrage then
and there, because I saw that was the fundamental right out of which all
others should necessarily flow, so I drew up a very short resolution, and my
husband said to rae,[^ Now you make the whole thing ridiculous. So long as
you advocated simply rights of education, rights of property, rights of chil-
dren, and all that sort of thing, it was very well, but the idea of demanding
the right of suffrage I'M And Lucretia Mott siid the same thing, and all the
committee who were interested in getting up the meeting were opposed to
this resolution. So I seemingly gave it up, but when I got into the conven-
tion I determined to push forward my resolution. Unfortunately, I had never
said a word in public, and how to put two sentences together I did not
know. So I surveyed the Convention, and there I saw Frederick Douglass,
and I knew that Frederick, from personal experience, was just the man for
the work, so I presented my resolution, then hurried to his side, and whispered
in his ear what I wanted said, and he went along awhile very well, but he
didn't speak quite fast enough for me, nor say all I wanted said, and the first
324 International Council of Women.
thing I knew I was on my feet defending the resolution, and in due time
Douglass and I carried the whole convention, and the resolution was passed
unanimously.
Well, I assure you, my friends, I was delighted with the success of the
whole thing. I had read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independ-
ence, and understood the genius of our Government, and I had read the
opinions of great men, and I found they were all in favor of woman suffrage.
Now, said I, the world will accept the argument at once. It is just, it is
right, and everybody must see it as plainly as I do. Imagine my surprise
after the joy I felt in the perfect success of the convention, for we had a
crowded house, and Lucretia Mott and her sister, Martha C. Wright, and
other women from the Society of Friends, had made admirable speeches,
and we had a magnificent man in the chair, James Mott, the husband of
Lucretia Mott, tall and stately, and very distinguished in appearance.
In a few days the papers began to come in. I believe every paper from
Maine to Louisiana published that declaration and made comments and ridi-
culed the whole thing. I was astounded. I had no idea there would be one
word of ridicule about the matter. My good father, who was then attend-
ing supreme court in New York, hearing of this, took the night train and
rushed up to Seneca Falls to see if I was insane. If I hadn't had a remark-
ably good constitution and a very cheerful temperament, I think I should
have been put into the insane asylum. I heard nothing but ridicule. Many
of the women who had put their names down in the enthusiasm of the con-
vention, as subscribers to the declaration, in a few days hurried to take them
off. Men were in consternation about the conduct of their sisters, mothers,
and wives in that convention. I never can tell you, I never can describe to
any one the humiliation I felt, and especially as I knew perfectly well that I
was right. When I met my father, my sister, who had also given her adhe-
sion to the principles, was in great consternation as to what we should say in
defense of ourselves. I said I thought we had everything to say, and I
really couldn't see what my father had to say on the other side. We talked
the matter over until midnight, and I was more than ever convinced that I
.was right, for my father was a logical and sensible man, and he could not
answer my arguments.
Perhaps I might have subsided altogether if it hadn't been that shortly
after that I met Susan B. Anthony, whom we have always called the
Napoleon of our movement. Then we put our heads together and we
commenced our work in earnest with a general attack all along the line.
We besieged the legislature every year ; we looked all around the country
and wherever we saw a convention of men having a nice time, we at once
sent a resolution demanding recognition. And I will tell you how we
managed. I would write the speeches and resolutions, and Susan would go
to the conventions and fire them off. I had a family of young children and
Conference of the Pioneers. 325
it was not convenient for me to go, but I accepted every invitation to do
everything, because I knew Susan could do it.
Martha C. Wright, Mrs. Seward, Susan B. Anthony, and myself were
often in consultation to see what more we could do to keep up the agitation.
We tormented our legislators for the woman's property bill in New York,
the first State that ever passed that bill, and the first State in the world that
ever gave to married women the rights of property. Until that time we
had been under the old'common law of England, under which women were
practically slaves, having no rights whatever that white men were bound to
respect. Year after year some new civil rights were accorded us. Then we
made an attack on the schools and the colleges, although at one time in all
the educational conventions not a woman's voice was heard, though perhaps
six or seven hundred of them would be sitting around like so many wall-
flowers.
And so in the temperance meetings — but I leave Antoinette Brown Black-
well to tell you about that. But when we think of all that has been done,
we can hardly believe what we see possible. From that time on, our con-
ventions began to be held all over the country ; the key-note was struck in
New York, then, Ohio, Massachusetts and Indiana soon followed, holding
their conventions from time to time, year by year growing larger and larger.
The advanced legislation in New York was copied by many of the new States
as they came into the Union and by some of the older States. It is hardly
possible to give you in detail all that we did from year to year and all that
we encountered in the way of ridicule and persecution.
Ridicule was the chief weapon of the press. IWe were caricatured in all the
papers until really the majority of people supposed that the women on the
suffrage platform had horns and hoofsj And now, as we sit here, how
changed is the scene ! Although at our first convention we were in a small
Methodist church, and held many afterwards in the open air, in barns, in
depots, in the dining-rooms of hotels, here to-day, at the end of forty years,
we have the most beautiful building in the Capital, with magnificent audi-
ences, and most complimentary notices by the press from one end of the
country to the other. This is a great encouragement to the women who are
present, and I want to give you a word to take to your homes. As soon as
you see a grand truth, utter it, and though you may be ridiculed in starting,
as the years go by, it will be received. In this long struggle I have never
felt that we stood alone, for as representatives of a living truth we are ever
linked with the great and grand of all ages, in every latitude and clime, with
those able and willing to live or die for a principle.
Miss Anthony. I should have informed the audience that the picture on
the platform is that of Lucretia Mott. I hope all will feel that her spirit is
with us this morning. If spirits are anywhere, and I believe they are every-
where, I know we have that loved and venerated pioneer with us to-day.
326 International Council of Women.
John W. Hutchinson, the one survivor of the Old Granite State Minstrels,
is with us this morning. Abbie, his sister, is not able to be present. It was
my hope through all the months of getting up this Council that we should
have both John and Abbie with us.
Mr. Hutchinson. There is a moment in the life of every mortal that is
a little better than any other, and this seems to me the pleasant moment in
my life, to be reckoned worthy of this position. Having gone through the
anti-slavery struggle, and sung the jubilee song over the downfall of Amer-
ican slavery, and engaged in the temperance reform until we have almost
seen victory, now to see the culmination of this glorious struggle, my heart
is full. Yes, the spirits of the glorious departed may well mingle with this
blessed audience to-day.
GREETING TO THE PIONEERS.
All hail, ye brave and noble band,
We greet with cheer and song.
Most honored queens of all the land.
Who struggled 'gainst the wrong.
Bright hopes we bring from East and West,
Each sister's heart to cheer.
Though oft oppressed, your cause is blest,
Your crown of triumph near.
For two-score years, through doubts and fears
And conflict fierce and long,
We've battled 'gainst the host of sin
And fortresses of wrong.
With our great leader pressing on,
Whose spirit ne'er could yield,
Lucretia waved the moral sword
That conquers every field.
Our hearts this day would tribute pay
The staunch and faithful three—
Our Stanton brave and Lucy true,
And dauntless Susan B.
We see the fruitage of the seed
, They planted long ago.
What matter, then, that forty years
Have crowned their heads with snow ?
I
We honor those who watered well
The precious plants which grew,
Because the germs had life divine
And tears are holy dew.
Beneath the shelter of the trees,
To which those plants shall grow,
A countless host in future years
True blessedness shall know.
With hopes renewed again we come
In love and joy to greet ;
Throughout our ranks no feuds exist,
Our unity's complete.
We're standing on the mountain top,
There's sunlight on our way ;
The everlasting hills of truth
Reach up to endless day.
Conference of the Pioneers. 327
From fields of conquest and renown
Our trophies rich we bring.
This Council will rejoice to hear
The victor's song we sing.
Press forward, then, our cause is just ;
Our triumph all shall hail ;
From sea to sea, let all be free ;
There's no such word as fail.
Miss Anthony. I should have said that Mr. Hutchinson's song is origi-
nal, but I think you all must have made this discovery, from its appropriate-
ness to the occasion.
Before I introduce Frederick Douglass, I want to ask the women on the
platform this morning, who attended that first Seneca Falls Convention, to
stand up. They are Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Sarah Anthony Burtis, Amy
Post, Mary Hallovvell, Sarah Willis, of Rochester, and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. The Seneca Falls Convention adjourned to meet two weeks after
in Rochester, and my mother and father and sister Mary, though not at
Seneca Falls, were at the Rochester meeting. I was teaching school in
Eastern New York, and in August following these two meetings, I went
home to Rochester, and they told me all about Lucretia Mott and her beau,
tiful face and words, and about Mrs. Stanton, how beautiful and grand —
never were such words spoken by anybody. My father was most enthusiastic
about it, and I laughed and said, " I think you are getting a good deal ahead
of the times." I wasn't ready to vote, didn't want to vote, but I did want
equal pay for equal work. I now introduce to you Frederick Douglass.
Mr. Douglass. I come to this platform with unusual diffidence. Al-
though I have long been identified with the Woman Suffrage movement,
and have often spoken in its favor, I am somewhat at a loss to know what to
say on this really great and uncommon occasion, where so much has been
said.
Men have very little business here as speakers anyhow, and if they come
here at all, they should take back benches and wrap themselves in silence,
for this is an International Council, not of men, but of women, and women
should have all the say in it. This is their day in court. * * * There
was a time when, perhaps, we men could help a little. It was when this
woman suffrage cause was in its cradle, when it was not big enough to go
alone, when it had to be taken in the arms of its mother from Seneca Falls
to Rochester for baptism. I then went along with it and offered my serv-
ices, for then it needed help ; but now it can afford to dispense with me and
all of my sex. Then its friends were few ; now its friends are many. Then
it was wrapped in obscurity ; now it is lifted in sight of the whole civilized
world, and the people of all lands and languages now give it their hearty
support. Truly the change is vast and wonderful. I thought my eye of
faith was tolerably clear, when I attended those meetings in Seneca Falls and
Rochester, but it was far too dim to see, at the end of forty years, a result
so imposing as this International Council. * * *
328 International Council of Women.
There may be some well-meaning people in this audience who have never
attended a Woman Suffrage Convention, never heard a woman suffrage
speech, never read a woman suffrage newspaper, and they may be surprised
that those who speak here do not argue the question. It may be kind to tell
them that our cause has passed beyond the period of arguing. The demand
of the hour is not argument, but assertion, firm and inflexible assertion,
assertion which has more than the force of an argument. If there is any
argument to be made it must be made by the opponents, not by the friends
of woman suffrage. Let those who want argument examine the ground
upon which they base their own claim to the right to vote. They will find
that there is not one reason, not one consideration which they can urge in
support of man's claim to vote, which does not equally support the right of
a woman to vote.
There is to-day, however, a special reason for omitting argument. This
is the end of the fourth decade of the woman suffrage movement, a kind of
jubilee which naturally turns our minds to the past. Ever since this Council
has been in session, my thoughts have been reverting to the past. I have
been thinking, more or less, of the scene presented forty years ago in the
little Wesleyan Methodist church at Seneca Falls, the manger in which this
organized suffrage movement was born. It w&s a very small thing then. It
was not then big enough to be abused, or loud enough to make itself heard
outside, and only a few of those who saw it, had any notion that the little
thing would live. I have been thinking, too, of the strong conviction, the
noble courage, the sublime faith in God and man, it required at that time, to
set this suffrage ball in motion. The history of the world has given to us
many sublime undertakings, but none more sublime than this.
It was a great thing for the friends of peace to organize in opposition to
war ; it was a great thing for the friends of temperance to organize against
intemperance; it was a great thing for humane people to organize in oppo-
sition to slavery ; but it was a much greater thing, in view of all the circum-
stances, for woman to organize herself in opposition to her exclusion from
participation in government. The reason is obvious. War, intemper-
ance, and slavery are open, undisguised, palpable evils. The best feelings
of human nature revolt at them. We could easily make men see the misery,
the debasement, the terrible suffering caused by intemperance ; we could
easily make men see the desolation wrought by war, and the hell-black hor-
rors of chattel slavery; but the case was different in the movement for
woman suffrage. Men took for granted all that could be said against intem-
perance, war, and slavery.
But no such advantage was found in the beginning of the cause of suf-
frage for woman. On the contrary, everything in her condition was sup-
posed to be lovely, just as it should be. She had no rights denied nor
wrong to redress. She herself had no suspicion but that all was going well
Conference of the Pioneers. 329
with her. She floated along on the tide of life, as her mother and grand-
mother had done before her, as in a dream of Paradise. Her wrongs, if she
had any, were too occult to be seen and too light to be felt. It required a
daring voice and a determined hand to awake her from this delightful dream,
and call the nation to account for the rights and opportunities of which it
was depriving her. It was well understood at the beginning, that woman
would not thank us for disturbing her by this call to duty, and it was known
that man would denounce and scorn us for such a daring innovation upon
the established order of things. But this did not appall or delay the word
and work. * * *
Then who were we, for I count myself in, who did this thing? We were
few in numbers, moderate in resources, and very little known in the world.
The most that we had to commend us, was a firm conviction that we were in
the right, and a firm faith that the right must ultimately prevail. But the
case was well considered. Let no man imagine that the step was taken reck-
lessly and thoughtlessly. Mrs. Stanton had dwelt upon it at least six years
before she declared it in the Rochester convention. Walking with her from
the house of Joseph and Thankful Southwick, two of the noblest people I
ever knew, Mrs. Stanton, with an earnestness that I shall never forget, un-
folded her views on this woman question precisely as she has in this Council.
This was six and forty years ago, and it was not until six years after, that she
ventured to make her formal, pronounced, and startling demand for the bal-
lot. There are few facts in my humble life to which I look back with
more satisfaction than to the one, recorded in the History of Woman Suffrage,
that I was sufficiently enlightened at that early day, and when only a few
years from slavery, to support Mrs. Stanton's resolution for woman suffrage.
I have done very little in this world in which to glory, except this one act,
and I certainly glory in that. When I ran away from slavery, it was for my-
self; when I advocated emancipation, it was for my people; but when I stood
up for the rights of woman, self was out of the question, and I found a little
nobility in the act.
In estimating the forces with which this suffrage cause has had to contend
during these forty years, the fact should be remembered that relations of
long standing beget a character in the parties to them, in favor of their con-
tinuance. Time itself is a conservative power — a very conservative power.
One shake of his hoary locks will sometimes paralyze the hand and palsy the
tongue of the reformer. The relation of man to woman has the advantage
of all the ages behind it. Those who oppose a readjustment of this relation
tell us that what is, always was, and always will be, world without end.
But we have heard this argument before, and if we live very long we shall
hear it again. When any aged error shall be assailed, and any old abuse is
to be removed, we shall meet this same old argument. Man has been so
long the king and woman the subject — man has been so long accustomed to
22
330 International Council of Women.
command and woman to obey — that both parties to the relation have been
hardened into their respective places, and thus has been piled up a mountain
of iron against woman's enfranchisement. * * *
The universality of man's rule over woman is another factor in the resist-
ance to the woman suffrage movement. We are pointed to the fact that men
have not only always ruled over women, but that they do so rule everywhere,
and they easily think that a thing that is done everywhere must be right.
Though the fallacy of this reasoning is too transparent to need refutation,
it still exerts a powerful influence. * * *
All good causes are mutually helpful. The benefits accruing from this
movement for the equal rights of woman are not confined to woman only.
They will be shared by every effort to promote the progress and welfare of
mankind everywhere and in all ages. It was an example and a prophecy of
what can be accomplished against strongly opposing forces, against time-
hallowed abuses, against deeply intrenched error, against world-wide usage,
and against the settled judgment of mankind, by a few earnest won, en, clad
only in the panoply of truth, and determined to live and die for what they
considered a righteous cause.
I do not forget the thoughtful remark of our President in the opening ad-
dress to this International Council, reminding us of the incompleteness of
our work. The remark was wise and timely. Nevertheless, ro man can
compare the present with the past ; the obstacles that then opposed us, and
the influences that now favor us, the meeting in the little Methodist chapel
forty years ago, and the Council in this vast theater to-day, without admit-
ting that woman's cause is already a brilliant success. But, however this
may be, and whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is cer-
tain— this new revolution in human thought will never go backward. When
a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison
it or prescribe its limits or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes
the thought of the world. Such a truth is woman's right to equal liberty
with man. She was born with it. It was hers before she comprehended it.
It is inscribed upon all the powers and faculties of her soul, and no custom,
law, nor usage can ever destroy it. Now that it has got fairly fixed in the
minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed in the minds of the many, and
be supported at last by a great crowd of witnesses, which no man can num-
ber and no power can withstand.
The women who have thus far carried on this agitation have already em-
bodied and illustrated Theodore Parker's three grades of human greatness.
The first is greatness in executive and administrative ability ; second, great-
f ness in the ability to organize ; and, third, in the ability to discover truth.
Wherever these three elements of power are combined in any movement,
there is a reasonable ground to believe in its final success, and these elements
of power have been manifest in the women who have had the movement in
Conference of the Pioneers. 331
hand from the beginning. They are seen in the order which has character-
ized the proceedings of this Council. They are seen in the depth and com-
prehensiveness of the discussions held in this Council. They are seen in the
fervid eloquence and downright earnestness with which women advocate
their cause. They are seen in the profound attention with which woman is
heard in her own behalf. They are seen in the steady growth and onward
march of the movement, and they will be seen in the final triumph of woman's
cause, not only in this country, but throughout the world.
Miss Anthony. I now have the pleasure of presenting to you one of the
oldest and most persistent of the pioneers, Mrs. Lucy Stone.
Mrs. Stone. We celebrate to-day the fortieth anniversary of the first
Woman's Rights Convention, held at Seneca Falls in 1848. But, long be-
fore our time, the idea of woman's rights was in the air. The war of the
Revolution prepared the way for it. More than a hundred years ago, the
sister of Robert Lee, of Virginia, wrote to her brother refusing to pay her
taxes, on the ground that, by our theory of government, taxation and repre-
sentation went together. But the idea became incarnate in the anti-slavery
struggle. Women who heard the plea of William Lloyd Garrison and Wen-
dell Phillips for equal huma"n rights, saw that the argument applied to women
not less than to the slaves. They took it in, and on ten thousand hill-tops,
and in as many valleys, they nursed the idea of equal rights for women.
Men felt it too.
The opportunity of equal education for women began when Oberlin Col-
lege was founded, in 1832. The charter pledged the college to give " to the
misjudged and neglected sex all the instructive privileges which have hitherto
unreasonably distinguished the leading sex from theirs."
This was the gray dawn of our morning. Its sure day came, when the
sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Abby Kelly began to speak publicly,
in behalf of the slaves. Public speaking by women was regarded as some-
thing monstrous. All the cyclones and blizzards which prejudice, bigotry,
and custom could raise, were let loose upon these three peerless women. But
they held fast to the eternal justice. Above the howling of mobs, the din
of the press, and the thunders of the pulpit, they heard the wail of the slave
and the cry of the mothers sold from their children. Literally taking their
lives in their hands, they went out to labor, "remembering those in bonds
as bound with them." In 1837 Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, was set
on fire and burned down while Angelina Grimke was speaking. In 1838
she spoke in the hall of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. It
was packed, as it probably never was before or since. The great crowd had
gathered, some from interest in the slavery question, more from curiosity to
hear a woman, and some intent upon making an uproar. Then this quiet
Quaker woman arose, utterly forgetful of herself, and, with anointed lips,
and eloquence rare and wonderful, she pleaded for the slave. The curious
332 International Council of Women.
forgot their curiosity, the mobocrat dropped his brickbat before the solemn
earnestness of this woman, who, for the slave's sake, had braved the mob
and the fagot, who could neither heed the uplifted finger that cried shame,
nor cease for the texts and sermons, or for the odium of the newspapers.
To herself, she was not flying in the face of Providence. It was no hunger
for personal notoriety that had brought her there, but a great, earnest pur-
pose that must find expression. How great a debt the woman's rights move-
ment owes to her ! But one such speech, or many, could not kill the hoary
prejudice of centuries. Circumstances soon compelled the sisters Grimke to
leave the public field. Abby Kelly remained, to bear alone the opprobrium
that was still heaped upon the woman, who so far departed from her sphere
as to speak in public.
Whatever of tribulation any of us have known, in the advocacy of this
reform, it has been play in comparison with the long, unrelieved torture
endured by Abby Kelly, in the battle which finally secured the right of free
speech for all women. A sharp onset with shot and shell is no trifle, but to
stand year after year, as Abby Kelly stood, in the thick of the fight, while
pulpit and press, editors and clergy, poured out upon her vials of bitterness
and wrath, required the courage of a martyr and the faith of a saint.
Think what it would be to live in the midst of perpetual scorn and
reproach ; to go to church and find the sermon directed at you from the text,
" This Jezebel has come among us also," and then, with no chance to reply,
to sit and hear all manner of lies told to the congregation about you ; at
another time to meet such insults under the roof where you sought shelter,
that you fled from it fasting, after thirty-six hours. These things were actual
incidents, and only a small part of what she endured. If Abby Kelly had
been a weak woman, one less noble or more self-seeking, she would have aban-
doned that terrible pioneer's post, and taken an easier way. She could
endure anything for the slave, but she found foes in the anti-slavery house-
hold, men whose love for the cause of freedom, was less than their prejudice
against a woman's speaking in public. They tried to silence her. For a
woman to serve on a committee was thought as shocking as for her to speak.
When Abby Kelly was appointed a member of the Business Committee of
the Anti-Slavery Society she was asked to resign." She said, "Is it because
I am not thought to be competent? If so, I will resign." " Oh, no; we
know you are competent." "Then," said she, " if it is because I am a
woman, I will riot resign."
We can have some conception of the situation, when we remember that the
Anti-Slavery Society divided on the matter, and thereafter there were two
anti-slavery societies : one that permitted women to speak and one that did
not. The great service that Abby Kelly rendered to the slave is less than
that which she rendered to women, when, at such a price, she earned for all
of us the right of free speech. Long after this right was conceded, the effects
Conference of the Pioneers. 333
of the old odium lingered, and she was regarded, by those who did not know
her, as a pestilent person, no better than she should be. Even as late as the
Worcester Convention, in 1850, some of the managers of the meeting con-
ferred together beforehand as to whether it was best to invite her to speak,
"she was so odious." But she was present, and in her brief speech said :
" Sisters, bloody feet have worn smooth the path by which you come up here."
It was her own bleeding feet that had worn the way, and yet some of that
convention feared her for the odium she would bring. So much for the three
peerless pioneers, Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and Abby Kelly.
As reminiscences are the order of the day, and a conference of pioneers is
always something of " an experience meeting," I will tell a few of my own
early experiences. They will show the growth of the cause and the great
gulf between the present and the past. In 1837 the Association of Congre-
gational Ministers of Massachusetts, issued a pastoral letter against the public
speaking of women, calling attention to the " danger which threatened the
female character with wide-spread and permanent injury." The letter was
read in all the churches. I sat in the gallery of the church at North Brook-
field and heard it read. The body of the house below was overflowing with
people and black with clergymen. Rev. Mr. Blagden, who was supposed to
be the author of the letter, walked up and down the broad aisle while it was
being read, and turning his head from side to side as he looked at us in the
gallery, his manner said, " Now we have silenced you." But he had only
sowed the seed of whose abundant harvest this meeting is a part. I was a
young school-teacher, still in my teens. If I had ever felt bound to silence
by misinterpretations of Scripture texts, or believed that equal rights did
not belong to women, that pastoral letter broke my bonds.
Six years later I went to Oberlin on purpose to study Greek and Hebrew,
and to read the texts in the original, and there I found the inspired truth,
that God loves his daughters as well as he does his sons. I graduated in
1847, and during that year made my first public speech for woman's rights
in my brother's pulpit, at Gardner, Mass. The next year I began to lecture
for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, but the idea of equal rights for
women had such possession of me, that I scattered it into every speech.
Hiram Powers' statue of the Greek slave was on exhibition in Boston. I
went up to see it early one morning. No other person was present. There
it stood in the silence, with fettered hands and half-averted face, so emble-
matic of woman. The hot tears came to my eyes at the thought of millions
of women who must be freed. At that evening's meeting I poured all my
heart out about it. At the close Rev. Samuel May, who was the general
agent of the Anti-Slavery Society, came to me, and with kind words for what
I had said, he admonished me that, however true, it was out of place in' an
anti-slavery meeting. Of course he was right. I said : " Well, Mr. May, I
was a woman before I was an abolitionist, and I must speak for women. I
334 International Council of Women.
will not go any more as a lecturer for the Anti-Slavery Society, but will work
wholly for woman's rights."
An arrangement was made, however, that I should speak Saturday evening
and Sunday for the Anti-Slavery Society, and be free to lecture the rest of the
week for woman's rights. Then I undertook what was, so far as I knew, a soli-
tary battle for woman's rights. Outside the little circle of Abolitionists, I knew
of no one who sympathized with the idea. The papers were not as ready
then to report a woman's rights' meeting as they are to-day, and the news of
the Seneca Falls convention had not. reached me. In Hanover street, Boston,
was a boarding-house kept by a very respectable retired sea captain and his
wife, where I could get meals for 12^ cents and lodging for 6^ cents. I
slept in the same bed with two of the daughters, in the attic occupied by the
servants, and separated from them only by a curtain. I had some small
handbills printed, and, as I could not pay for posting them, I bought a paper
of tacks and put up my bills myself, using a stone for a hammer. A collec-
tion was taken up at the close of each meeting. I went around with the hat
myself; there was no one else to do it. The audiences were always large,
drawn partly by curiosity to hear a woman, and partly by interest in the sub-
ject, and the collection always came to enough to pay the expenses. At first
I did not take a fee at the door, from a feeling that everybody ought to hear,
and that some might be kept out by a fee.
At one time, in Salem, I had engaged a hall, when I had only fifty cents.
The Hutchinsons were to sing that night. They did not want to have their
audience divided. John Hutchinson came and proposed that we should
unite. They would sing and I should lecture, and we could divide receipts.
This we did. Then Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols, of Brattleboro, Vt., wrote asking
me to come there, and saying that she would arrange the meeting and have
a fee at the door. After that, for several years, I followed that plan, and
did not see that the audiences were any smaller. I went from city to city
and from State to State, carrying the good gospel of equal rights, and seek-
ing to create that wholesome discontent among women, which would make
them resent their unequal condition and wish to escape from it. But the
good sought to be done, was hindered by the falsehoods and misrepresenta-
tions of the press. After one lecture in Indiana, the morning paper reported
that I had been found in the bar-room, smoking a cigar and swearing like a
trooper. Another closed a denunciatory article with the words : "You she-
hyena, don't you come here!" Another expressed its surprise to find a
woman 's-rights speaker a modest woman, and said they had always thought
of me as of the lion tamer in Van Amburgh's menagerie.
My first meeting with Mrs. Stanton was at some convention held when
her first daughter was a baby. I have forgotten the time and place, but I
remember how proudly she held up the baby, at the house where she was en-
tertained, and said: "Doesn't she look like Lucretia Mott?" Mrs. Mott
Conference of the Pioneers. 335
was our ideal woman, and one of the most persuasive advocates of the cause ;
James Mott was always with her, and the beautiful harmony of their lives was
the best answer to the objection about " discord in families." It was at the
Syracuse convention that I first met Susan Anthony ; and for years after we
went through many hard experiences together. From that time we went on
holding conventions everywhere, and crowds came to hear us. I think they
always met us good-naturedly. Even the mobs offered no violence ; they
only tried, by howling, to prevent our being heard.
We began very early to scatter literature. After the Worcester conven-
tions, I printed a little book of tracts which, in Mrs. Robinson's history,
she calls the Wendell Phillips tracts. I gathered together the speeches of
Wendell Phillips, Colonel Higginson, Theodore Parker, and Mrs. C. I. H.
Nichols, and the article by Mrs. John Stuart Mill in the Westminster
Review, and put them all into one little book, and carried it to my meet-
ings. We took quantities of them to Kansas, when we went there in 1867,
to work for a constitutional amendment.
We demanded a greater variety of work tor women, and better wages. It
was objected that this would take women out of their sphere. The reply was,
that whatever was fit to be done at all might with propriety be done by any-
body who could do it well ; that the tools belong to those who can use
them ; that the existence of a power presupposes the right to its use, subject
only to the law of benevolence. We demanded better education for women,
and that colleges should be open to them. It was objected that, if the col-
lege course was brought to the level of the comprehension of women, it would
" lower the standard " of education. How different has been the actual result !
We showed the atrocity of the old common law as it affected wives, and
asked for better legal conditions.
But it was the demand for the ballot that met with the fiercest opposition.
We were told that women would neglect their families, domestic comfort
would be at an end, and quarrels between husband and wife would multiply.
Last of all, it was said that if women vote, they must fight ; that the ballot and
the bullet went together. Nobody considered that the woman who had given
twenty years of her life to bringing up her family has done as much for her
country as the man who may be a soldier. Objections were endless, but they
were all answered. The self-evident truths, against which there can be no
argument, were all on our side. We knew that our principles were right,
and that in the long run they were bound to succeed. We see the proof of
it to-day.
Miss Anthony. I now introduce to you the one man who has devoted
his life to aiding his wife in her work for the emancipation of woman, Henry
B. Blackwell.
Mr. Blackwell. I do not claim to be a pioneer in this movement. I
deserve no credit for having worked for it. All that I am I owe to women.
336 International Council of Women.
For when my father died, in Cincinnati, fifty years ago, a stranger in a new
country, leaving his wife and children almost destitute, it was my mother
and sisters who organized a school, kept the family together, sent me to
college, and gave the best years of their life to the education of the younger
children. Should I not be a coward and a craven to deny to such women
every right I claim for myself? * * * The first organized demand of
American women for legal and political equality was made in Seneca Falls,
N. Y. , in 1848, but the principle is as old as history. It was taught by
Moses and affirmed by Plato. Women in all ages have been rulers in em-
pires, kingdoms, and aristocracies, and were made voters in the very for-
mation of our government. * * * The woman-suffrage movement is
not new ; it is not exclusively a woman's movement, it is a move-
ment of women and men for the common interest of all. Let me briefly
name some of the salient points in the march of social evolution in this
country, which for more than two hundred years has been preparing for the
ultimate enfranchisement of woman. Our movement has its root in Quaker-
ism. The disciples of George Fox and William Penn were the original set-
tlers of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The cardinal principle of Puritanism
was manhood suffrage in church and State, but the cardinal principle of
Quakerism was the equality of the sexes in the home and in the church.
On the banks of the Delaware, in the city of Burlington, on the 2d day of
July, 1776, two days before the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
on the motion of a Quaker minister, the Constitutional Convention of New
Jersey, revising its colonial charter, changed the suffrage clause from " male
freeholders worth forty pounds " to "all inhabitants worth forty pounds,"
thus extending the suffrage upon a property qualification to women and free-
men of color. The election law subsequently framed used the words "he
or she " and " his or her ballot," and for thirty-one years women voted in
increasing numbers. In 1800 the women voters of New Jersey decided the
Presidential election, giving the decisive electoral vote of the State to John
Quincy Adams over Thomas Jefferson. But New Jersey was a slave State,
without free schools. The mass of women had no property. The old En-
glish common law gave the persons and property of the wives to the hus-
bands. An immigration of illiterate Swedes and Germans outnumbered the
original Quaker element. In 1807 the Democrats for the first time had a
majority of the Legislature, and enacted that henceforth the words " all in-
habitants worth forty pounds " should be construed to mean " all white men
whose names appeared on the last State or county tax-list." Thus, in vio-
lation of constitution and usage, all women and free colored men were dis-
franchised, and all white men, upon the payment of a one-dollar poll-tax,
were made voters. Any woman or colored man who should thereafter offer
to vote was by law made punishable by fine and imprisonment. And the
gallant little State which had stood nobly by the side of Washington became,
and has ever since remained, subject to political and money monopolies.
Conference of the Pioneers. 337
But woman-suffrage sentiment was not confined to Quaker New Jersey.
In Virginia, more than a century ago, the sister of Robert Henry Lee, and
the wife of John Adams, in Massachusetts, protested against the unrepre-
sented taxation of women. In 1787 the first constitutional convention of
Massachusetts had woman suffragists among its members. Three times the
word "male" appears in the Massachusetts constitution; but in each case a
separate motion was made in the convention to strike out the word.
In 1832 the anti-slavery movement brought woman's rights again to the
front. Abolition allied itself with the cause of woman. The pictorial head-
ing of the Liberator, from its first issue, had on it the kneeling figure of a
female slave, with the legend, "Am I not a woman and a sister? " * * *
How nobly women responded to that call ! In that same year, 1832, the
Boston Anti-Slavery Society was formed by twelve ladies. Miss Sarah
Southwick, of Wellesley Hills, Mass., who is with us to-day, joined that so-
ciety in 1835.
Miss Anthony. Will Mr. Blackwell allow me to present Miss Southwick
to the audience ? (Miss Southwick stepped to the front, and was greeted with
great applause.)
Mr. Blackwell. In 1833 Prudence Crandall was mobbed in Canterbury,
Conn., for establishing a school for colored girls. In 1835, as a boy, I was
enlisted by my mother and sisters in an anti-slavery fair at Niblo's Garden,
New York. A large circle of ladies, among whom was Lydia Maria Child,
worked for it as women now work in our New England Woman Suffrage
Bazaar. Similar fairs were annually held by women to raise money for the
support of the movement. In 1835 eight hundred New York women peti-
tioned Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.
In 1837 Sarah and Angelina Grimke, of Charleston, S. C. (Quaker sisters),
freed their slaves and went to Boston. They claimed the right of women to
take part in politics as speakers and leaders of public opinion. Then, as
now, women were found to oppose the rights of their own sex. Catharine
Beecher, daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher,a remonstrant, published an essay
on " Slavery and Abolitionism with Reference to the Duty of American
Females," addressed to Angelina Grimke. To this the Grimke sisters re-
plied in a series of thirteen letters, which the biographers of Mr. Garrison
pronounce "the beginning of the woman's-rights agitation in America."
The Massachusetts General Association of Congregational Churches took
alarm, and issued a "pastoral letter," which affirmed that the New Testa-
ment teaches the subjection of woman. * * *
In 1839 the right of female members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society was questioned. But Francis Jackson promptly ruled that " it is in
order for women to vote," and no appeal was taken. But now a tempest
arose over " woman's rights." Its advocacy was confined to the " Garri-
sonians." The "evangelical" wing and the voting Abolitionists opposed
338 International Council of Women.
the public speaking of women. One anti-slavery leader wrote, in 1839, of
the Cleveland convention, " Our meeting was a grand one. Four hundred
delegates. No miserable woman question to gag or perplex us." Elizur
Wright complained that " everything has been made to turn on the woman
question." He urged a new departure in which " the confounded woman
question will be forgotten, and we shall take a living position."
In May, 1840, there was great excitement respecting the annual meeting
of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York. If possible, women
would be excluded. But the New England Abolitionists were* equal to the
emergency. They chartered a special steamboat and sent over four hundred
delegates to New York. The question was on the admission of Miss Abby Kel-
ly as a member of the business committee. Out of a total of 1,008 votes a
hundred majority voted in her favor. Tappan, Phelps, and Dennison at once
declined to serve. Tappan said : "To put a woman on a committee is 'con-
trary to the usages of civilized society.' " Revs. Phelps and Dennison said :
"It is 'contrary to the gospel and to our consciences.' " They with-
drew- with the minority, and formed a new society. In 1840 Harriet
Martineau, Mrs. Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Chapman, Mrs. Child, Abby Kelly,
and Emily Winslow were made delegates to the World's Anti-Slavery Con-
vention in London. They were refused admittance, and Mr. Garrison there-
upon refused to act in the convention.
Between 1840 and 1845 the anti-slavery movement East and West crystal-
lized into two distinct phases — the moral and the political. The moral, or
Garrisonian wing, was conspicuously in favor of woman's rights, and was
largely maintained by women : Abby Kelly, Maria Weston Chapman, and
Lydia Maria Child, in Massachusetts ; Elizabeth Buffum Chace, in Rhode
Island ; Lucretia Mott and Mary Grew, in Pennsylvania; Sarah Otis Ernst
and Josephine Griffing, in Ohio. In 1845 Elizabeth Blackwell began the
study of medicine. She had great difficulty in gaining admission to a medi-
cal college. But Geneva, N. Y., opened its doors. I was present at her
graduation, in 1849. She was the first woman who ever received a medical
diploma. In 1843 Lucy Stone, a farmer's daughter, with a few hard-earned
dollars raised by teaching, studied at Oberlin College for four years, talking
woman's rights, to the consternation of the faculty, who regarded her with
mingled respect and terror. In 1846, Antoinette Brown, going there to study
theology, was warned, before crossing the Ohio line, against a girl there with
woman 's-rights ideas. The last contest against the right of woman to act
and speak in politics was some years later, in the World's Temperance Con-
vention in New York, where Rev. Antoinette Brown was silenced and ex-
cluded by a mob of ministers led by Samuel Carey, of Ohio.
Previous to this, woman suffrage had begun to permeate the Whig party.
In 1836, in Illinois, young Abraham Lincoln boldly said: "I go for all
sharing the privileges of the Government, who assist in bearing its burdens;
Conference of the Pioneers. 339
consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay
taxes or bear arms, by no means excluding females." The Presidential
campaign of 1840 was signalized by a general attendance of women at the
Whig meetings. Women took an active part in the songs, processions, and
festivities which characterized the great mass meetings and barbecues. These
mixed meetings of men and women, full of light and life and mirth and
music, were in marked contrast with the Van Buren gatherings of men alone
—often dull and dreary, sometimes coarse and profane, always lacking in the
ideality anU refinement due to the presence of women.
In 1850 a second woman-suffrage convention was held in Mt. Vernon,
Knox County, Ohio, by Frances D. Gage and others. They had not heard
of the convention of 1848, and supposed they were were the first. In
1850 and 1 85 1 conventions were held in Worcester, Mass. The report of
the Worcester convention in the New York Tribune struck Mrs. John Stuart
Mill, and led to her remarkable article in the Westminster Review, entitled
•'' The Enfranchisement of Women," which started the movement in Great
Britain. In 1853 a great convention, gotten up by Mrs. Caroline M. Sev-
erance, was held in Cleveland, Ohio, at which I made my own first public
speech for woman suffrage. * * *
In 1856 the Republican party was organized. Women were active and
conspicuous in its support. Its watch-word that year was "John and Jessie,"
and the name of Jessie Benton Fremont won as many votes for the cause as
did that of "the path-finder," her illustrious husbarci. No speaker ever did
it such effective service as Anna. E. Dickinson. With the growth of that
great party, woman-suffrage ideas continued to grow, until, in 1872, the na-
tional Republican platform contained this resolution :
" The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to'the loyaljwomen of Amer-
ica for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom ; their admission to wider fields
of usefulness is viewed with satisfaction, and the honest demands of any class of
citizens for additional rights should receive respectful consideration."
Upon that progressive platform the Republican party reached its culmina-
tion, and polled its largest vote.
Thus many long years of practical woman suffrage in New Jersey, and of
steady growth of public opinion throughout the country, prepared the way for
the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Since that time there has been an in-
creasing and progressive movement on both sides of the ocean, until to-day we
stand with our banners shining in the light of victory. Full woman suffrage
in Wyoming and Washington Territories, municipal woman suffrage in the
great State of Kansas, school suffrage in fourteen States and four Territories,
these are our trophies.
A revolution has been effected in woman's position in law, in industry,
in the professions, in education, in the home, and in society. The new
parties of temperance and labor have woman -suffrage platforms, and the
best elements of both the old parties are becoming enlisted in our favor.
340 International Council of Women.
Miss Anthony. Now I shall introduce to you a very young lady who went
to Oberlin College, and who had a fancy or a freak that she wanted to study
theology, and the good professor told her at last that she might. She was
not only the first woman to take a theological course, but the first to be or-
dained as a minister. Antoinette Brown Blackwell and Lucy Stone were
classmates, and, bound to go together through the world, they married
brothers.
Mrs. Blackwell. The "embarrassment of riches" of every person who
began to work over forty years ago, is certainly very great. Mrs. Stanton
started the great flood of conventions, which has culminated now in this tidal
wave ; but I shall be forced to go back and give you something of my own
record in order to correct misapprehensions. It has been stated here by one
of the speakers that I was ordained an independent minister. Independent*
I hope, but not in the technical sense ; and, to-day, I should like to give
due credit to the orthodox Congregationalists, who have helped me wonder-
fully by always being so generous as to say, "Act upon your own responsi-
bility." For a year previous to my ordination I was a settled pastor of an
orthodox Congregational church in good and regular standing. The church
called a council. The man who preached the ordination sermon was a Wes-
leyan Methodist, Rev. Luther Lee, of Syracuse. The ordination was accord-
ing to Congregational usage.
It is true that forty years ago, on my way to Oberlin, I was warned against
Lucy Stone, because she would lead away a young woman by talking woman's
rights, and I found the community literally humming over the woman ques-
tion, not in public, but in cliques. The discussion was going on every-
where. * * *
There never was at Oberlin any objection to a woman taking any course
of study she desired. When I went there, having my own views about the
desirability of prolonged classical study, instead of taking my place at the
foot of one department, I went toward the head in another, and became Lucy
Stone's classmate. We petitioned our rhetoric professor, James A. Tome,
since he required us to listen to the orations and discussions of the young men
of our class, to allow us to take part also. The professor did appoint us to take
part in a discussion in the presence of the class, and we did it to the best of
our ability. Then the faculty intervened. There were no more semi-public
discussions on the part of young women. We already had an association
for discussion and improvement. We didn't call it a woman's club, but we
met in those years, i846-'47, and our purposes were exactly what the pur-
poses of the women who form clubs to-day are.
We were often obliged to bring our thoughts before the class, because there
was no other method of making known our opinions. Of course, St. Paul
in his teaching to the Corinthians and to Timothy blocked the way, so we
prepared essays to read, giving an exegesis of St. Paul's texts, and with the
Conference of the Pioneers. 341
audacity of our convictions we re-interpreted St. Paul. Finally this came
to the ears of President Mahan, who never attempted to say that any girl
might not do what she pleased ; he was nobly liberal in all ways. He sent
for the writer and for her paper ; he went over it carefully, and some months
later he decided that it ought to have a hearing. He and Professor Charles
J. Finney were editors of the Oberlin Quarterly Review, and he was gen-
erous enough to say that this article should have a place there. For it had
won position and ought to be brought before the public. The curious part
of this was that in the same Oberlin Quarterly Revieiv is an article by Presi-
dent Fairchild, then Professor Fairchild, taking a conservative view of the
woman question. And President Fairchild, whose daughter is here to-day,
read over the proofs of both articles, diametrically opposed in sentiment,
and generously came to the boarding-hall and made verbal criticisms. If
you take these facts you will understand that Oberlin was intensely com-
mitted to free speech.
But it made its point so nicely that the reason Lucy Stone couldn't give
her graduating essay was that men sat upon the platform and young men
came up to read their essays, because it was men's day ; but the day before,
we others, not receiving the degree of the classical department, when the
lady board sat upon the platform and when the white haired President Mahan
was the only professor anywhere around, came forward and read our own
essays from the same place and to almost the identical audience, which the
young men the next day doubtless more brilliantly enlightened. This was
Oberlin's consistency.
When we began to study theology, Mrs. Lettie Smith Holmes and her hus-
band and myself were among the students ; we had three classes in one —
that is, the whole theological department had its literary exercises together,
ind, under the constitution, it required each member to present an essay, an
>ration, discussion, etc. The young men of that committee appointed their
jirl classmate to take part in thediscussion. Professor Morgan was one ot the
most outspoken opponents of woman's doing anything in public. When the
appointment was read off, the professor, coming to the fatal name, looked
ltterly blank. I think for a moment I hardly breathed ; then he quietly
read on the appointments and asked the young men to remain after the
exercises. 1 do not tell the secrets of learned college halls, but the young
len pointed out that their constitution required the young women to take
jart in all the exercises, and they declined to amend that constitution. And
this time the faculty declined to intervene. Then the professor, when the
ime for debate came, said, " I can not help myself; if I could stop you I
would ; but, as I can not, I will do the best I can to give you instruction ;
act upon your own responsibility," and she did. They kept that contract
faithfully for three years.
The World's Temperance Convention in 1853 was the first that ac-
342 International Council of Women.
cepted a woman delegate. I came from two societies, with two deacons
of my church, for at that time I was a pastor. We had decided that I
should simply rise, say that I was a delegate, thank them for courteously
receiving me, and then quietly withdraw and go to one of our con-
ventions, which was being held at New York city at the same time.
Wendell Phillips and Mrs. Severance were with me, and we three were
the only persons who came to present this delegate's credentials. But
the moment I attempted to thank them, the whole house seemed to
rise en masse, and such a hubbub, such a confusion, such a determination
not to hear a woman's voice in a temperance convention ! It was some-
thing to remember to one's dying day ! We quietly waited and the whole
day passed over. Nothing could be done; it was all discussing " Shall the
woman speak?" I was a delegate, was accepted, and was admitted.
" Shall she speak?" and the answer was every time " No." We adjourned,
and the next day came together again, and other delegates were there to
do what they could, and for five hours I stood, only wishing to talk one
minute perhaps, but for five hours I stood there, feeling that I had a right to
free speech as a delegate. Then they adjourned the convention and ruled
out all except speakers invited. Indeed, they had done that once before.
They had decided that no one should speak in the convention unless
invited to the platform, but Neal Dow was generous, and when he saw me,
a woman, he invited me to the platform, and so I stood there for five hours.
Miss Anthony. I now have the pleasure of presenting to you a man who,
though he didn't stand by Mrs. Stanton's resolution in 1848, because he
wasn't there, did stand by her at a later day, when the cry was, "This is
the negro's hour." When Mrs. Stanton dared to say, " I believe in suffrage
for all men and all women ; still, if the Republican party will insist upon
taking a wheelbarrowful at a time into the body politic, I insist that it is
more important for this Government to have a wheelbarrow-load of intelli-
gent, native-born, educated, tax-paying women than of ignorant plantation
men." At the close of the war we had a fearful word battle as to who should
come into the kingdom of politics first — black men, or all the disfranchised
men and women, black and white. During those discussions there was one
man who stood upon the platform here in Washington, in 1869, and said :
"If need be, I would prefer to bide my time for twenty years before I shall
deposit a ballot, if at that time I maybe allowed to take my wife and daugh-
ter with me to the ballot-box." That man was Robert Purvis, of Phila-
delphia.
Mr. Purvis. I am very sure that our Chairman did not intend to em-
barrass me by a reference to a matter which, it seems to me, does not merit so
much compliment as she has given. It was the most natural thing for me to
do, and the only matter of surprise is that any one in the same circumstances
would not have been equally ready to do it. I value the honor of being
Conference of the Pioneers. 343
ranked as a pioneer in this cause, although I can not claim, as my friend
Douglass can, to have been a member of the first Woman's Rights Conven-
tion at Seneca Falls ; but I owe it to myself to say that anterior, some few
years at least, to the matter to which Mrs. Blackwell has referred in the test
vote touching the appointment of Abby Kelly, subsequently Abby Foster,
I stand rightly upon the record in that vote which I gave that time. I had
before committed myself to the belief that whatever was morally right for
a man, was equally so for a woman.
This cause, Miss President, is in many respects analogous to that which
you and our esteemed President, Mrs. Stanton, and our friend, Lucy Stone,
and our beloved friend, Mary Grew, whom I am glad to see here this morn-
ing, waged against the slave power in our land. You know how we boasted
then and we boast now, but with a little more consistency, that our land is
the freest land upon the face of the globe. We exultingly pointed to the
truth, as in our Declaration of Independence, that all persons were born free
and equal, and were endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of hapiness, and yet at that very time we held one-sixth portion
of the people of this country as chattels, slaves, to be bought and sold, and
to be branded and whipped, and killed all the day long. With sublime
impudence we boasted that this was the land of the free and the home of the
brave. We were, in truth, a country
" Where the fustian banner proudly waves
In splendid mockery o'er a land of slaves."
Turn from this inconsistency to another. We yet hold and declare as a
parallel and a paradox, that the right of voting and representation are recip-
rocal ; that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed ; and, in face of this, in the presence of women who constitute
one-half of this population, we ignore the application of what we consider
to be truths.
It was not my purpose, however, to occupy my moments with words of
this kind, but it was, simply, Miss Chairman, to present to you and your
coadjutors my deepest, heartiest, warmest congratulations at the marvelous
success that has followed your labors — a success that portends, in the near
future, your emancipation.
You recollect a few years ago a Scotch poet named Mackay, writing in the
interests of the toilers of Europe, and in Great Britain, particularly,
wrote "There's a good time coming, boys, a good time coming; wait
a little longer." Upon one occasion, when they were singing this song,
a wearied toiler, whose aching heart was longing for the breaking of the
day when the heavy burden upon him might be lifted, rose in his place, and
with honest simplicity, inquired of the singer whether he could name the day.
I possess no gift of prophecy : I can not penetrate the vista of the future,
but I believe I can name the day of "the good time coming." I see it, I
feel it. Our good President told us that the signs of the times indicated
344 International Council of Women.
this. It is so. It comes to us in its animating and inspiring force. It ena-
bles us to see throughout the world, that despotism is becoming, to use a mild
word, unfashionable ; that scepters are being respected only as they rule in
righteousness, to effect purposes of mercy and benevolence. That the thrones
of all despots, great or small, wherever found, whether as rulers over king-
doms or lesser ones in our domestic homes, rest upon shallow, sandy, uncer-
tain foundations; that the genius of liberty and freedom is moving on —
moving on — demanding in tones not to be misunderstood, demanding in the
name of justice and outraged humanity, a practical recognition of the doc-
trine of equality of rights for all, without regard to sex, color, race, or con-
dition.
" There's a voice on evers* wave,
A sound on every sea,
The watch-word of the brave,
The anthem of the free.
From steep to steep it rings,
Through Europe's many climes ;
A knell to despot kings,
A sentence on their crimes.
From every giant hill,
Companion of the cloud.
The startled echo leaps,
To give it hack aloud.
Where'er a wind is rushing,
Where'er a stream is gushing,
The swelling notes are heard
Of man to freeman calling,
Of broken fetters falling, ,
And like the carol of a cageless bird,
The bursting shout is freedom's rallying word."
And now, Miss Chairman, in the hope that I shall join with you in heart
and song in the jubilee that is coming, I shall then, as Simeon of old, be
ready to say : " Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace."
Miss Anthony. As we have no pioneer present from the Old World,
from England, where Mrs. Peter A. Taylor is called the mother of the
Woman's Suffrage movement; Mrs. Priscilla Bright McClaren, Mrs. Eliza-
beth Pease Nichol, Eliza Wigham — as we have none of the older ones
present, we deem it fitting that we shall have a song from one of the children
of that movement, Mrs. Ormiston Chant.
Mrs. Chant then rendered, with exquisite feeling, "The Lost
Chord."
Miss Anthony. Now I will present to vou Miss Mary Grew, of Philadel-
phia, who was one of the women at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention,
in London, in 1840, and who has stood in Philadelphia at the very front,
through all the anti-slavery struggle and up to this hour, of the Woman
Suffrage movement.
Miss Grew. When the great moral revolution, to which my life was chiefly
Conference of the Pioneers. 345
given, came to an end I sang my nunc dimittis. A quarter of a century has
passed away, and again ''mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of
the Lord." You ha^e heard of that World's Convention in London, from
which half the world was excluded, where a vow was registered and a purpose
formed from which has resulted, among many other things, this Interna-
tional Council of Women, occupying a week in the capital of the United
States. Of that band of women who sat silent there only three are here to-
day. Most of them have finished their course, having kept their faith and
departed hence.
But those who can look back so far across the years nearly rounding half
a century, and compare the condition of woman then with her position
to-day, feel the contrast so great, so wonderful, that we instinctively exclaim,
"What hath God wrought ! " Then custom and religion — no, not religion,
but the church — taught man to hold woman as his plaything, pet, drudge, or
slave, and when she asked for rights he said, "You have my glory," and
wondered that she was not content to stand in that reflected light. To-day
she stands up a human being, endowed with all the faculties of her brother
man, demanding her rights. To-day legislators are making laws at her bid-
ding. Yes, little by little, step by step, they are meting out justice to
woman, protecting her rights of property and of person in marriage, giving
her gradually more of these rights, some from a sense of justice, some,
doubtless, from a desire to quiet her demands and say, " Thus far we
will go and no farther ; content yourselves with that." Colleges
are open to her. She is reaching into avenues of industry which were
closed against her ; she is putting forth her hand to take the tools
she can use, and generally she does take them. She fills and adorns
to-day the profession of medicine. She pleads in our courts, even in the
Supreme Court of the United States. You have heard how she has unlocked
the door of the pulpit and stands there to-day, ordained by the laying on of
hands, to preach the gospel of Him, in whose sight is neither Jew nor
Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Him.
I rejoice to-day that the pioneer who first opened the door of the American
pulpit is here, having borne her cross, if cross it were, and wearing her crown
now ; sitting with us, surrounded by her sisters who have followed in her
steps. There was another pioneer who trod the thorny path, who smoothed
the way into the medical profession for those who should come after her.
We do not forget her name, though she is not with us to-day, nor do we
forget the sainted ones who, having done well and wisely, having fought out
their battles unto their death, have gone hence, and who, perchance, are
mingling their sympathies with us now.
It is meet, it is fitting that we come here and stand awhile on this mount
of retrospection and prospective vision, and recount all the steps of the way
as far as we can recount them, and while we rejoice and take courage in
23
346 International Council of Women.
thinking over the wonderful things which have been done in the name of
justice, and are full of hope, full of faith, we do not forget that the work is
not done ; that all is not won ; that there is hard work to be done, battles to
be fought, temporary defeats to be sustained, victories to be won, and we do
not stand as one who puts off the harness. We have learned much in the
past. • We have learned the value of weapons. We have learned who are our
antagonists. We have learned what is the great opponent that we have to
meet — greater, perhaps, than all others combined — the great liquor league of
this nation, strong in numbers, strong in wealth, not very strong in moral
power, but steadfast, immovable, always abounding in works of evil. In-
stinctively, intuitively it is the foe of this cause, for well it knows that its
power will be broken when woman comes into her kingdom. In the pres-
ence of such a foe we might quail did we not know that the principle of
immortal life is in truth and justice, and that the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth, a fact which our opponents seem sometimes to forget. But not
because woman will do good work in lifting up the debased ; not because
she will strike down with one hand this great foe to human progress ; not
because she will vote in this way or another, do I demand the ballot chiefly ;
I demand it on the ground of absolute justice — I demand it on the ground
of the foundation principle of this American Government, which takes a lie
in its mouth in offering to me, as it does, those principles of the Declaration
of Independence, while it withholds from me and my sisters, the ballot.
We are going on to victory. In a dozen of States women wield the bal-
lot, very much restricted, to be sure. In two Territories they stand side by
side with their brothers. Are not these signs of the times sufficient to en-
courage us? But most of all we are encouraged because we know that God
is on our side ; that any cause based upon righteousness can never fail,
although it may seem to. Some of us very aged ones, may not live to see
the completion of this work ; may not join in the jubilee which shall cele-
brate the emancipation of woman. It may be beyond the time when we
shall leave this world, but if so we shall die full of faith and sure of its per-
fect completion ; shall die leaving it confidently and in hope, to the younger
workers who are rallying around our banner and crowding our meeting ;
who are registering themselves as friends of equality and justice for man and
woman.
We shall bequeath it to you, young friends ; to you gathered here, with
the fresh chrism of consecration on your brows ; bequeath it to you with all
its glorious opportunities, its solemn responsibilities, and with our parting
word, " Be thou faithful unto death or victory."
Miss Anthony. I now present to you Mrs. Matilda Josyln Gage, who,
though not at the convention of 1848, in person, was there in spirit. She
attended the Syracuse convention in 1852, at which she and I first met the
leaders of the Woman's Rights movement. I never saw Lucretia Mott or
Conference of the Pioneers. 347
Lucy Stone, or any of the earlier champions of the cause, except Mrs. Stan-
ton and Abby Kelly, until that day.
Mrs. Gage. I have frequently been asked what first turned my thoughts
towards woman's rights. I think 1 was born with a hatred of oppression,
and, too, in my father's house, I was trained in the anti-slavery ranks, for it
was one of the stations on the underground railway, and a home of anti-
slavery speakers. Well I remember the wonder with which, when a young
girl, I looked upon Abby Kelly, when she spoke of the wrongs of black
women and black men. Then I remember, before the Round House in
my city of Syracuse was finished, a large and enthusiastic anti-slavery con-
vention was held there, attended by thousands of people who all joined in sing-
ing William Lloyd Garrison's song, " I'm an Abolitionist and glory in the
Name," and as they rang out that glorious defiance against wrong, it thrilled
my very heart, and I feel it echoing to this day.
I am indebted to my father for something better than a collegiate educa-
tion. He taught me to think for myself, and not to accept the word of any
man, or society, or human being, but to fully examine for myself. My father
was a physician, training me himself, giving me lessons in physiology and
natomy, and while I was a young girl he spoke of my entering Geneva
Medical College, whose president was his old professor, and studying for a
physician, but that was not to be. I had been married quite a number of
years when Elizabeth Blackwell was graduated from that institution, which
opened its doors to admit her, closing them, upon her graduation, to women,
until since its union with the Syracuse University. But with regard to
woman's rights proper, when I saw the reports of the first convention in the
New York Tribune, I knew my place ; and when I read the notice of a con-
vention to be held in Syracuse, in 1852, I at once decided to publicly join
the ranks of those who spoke against wrong. But I was entirely ignorant of
all parliamentary rule, or what was necessary to be done. I prepared my
speech, and, going to the convention, sat near the front, and with a palpi-
tating heart waited until I obtained courage to go upon the platform, prob-
ably to the interference of arrangements, for I knew nothing about the
proper course for me to take. But I was so sweetly welcomed by the sainted
Lucretia Mott, who gave me a place, and, when I had finished speaking,
referred so pleasantly to what I had said, and to her my heart turns always
with truest affection. Soon after the close of the convention, almost im-
mediately afterwards, it was criticised from the pulpit by the Rev. Mr. Ash-
ley, of the Episcopal Church, and Rev. Mr. Sunderland, now of this city,
but then established at Syracuse. With the latter gentleman I carried on a
long newspaper controversy. As Miss Grew has truly said, it is not religion
that has opposed woman suffrage, because true religion believes in undoing
the heavy burdens and letting the oppressed go free. But from the church
and from theology this reform has met opposition at every step.
348 International Council of Women.
Miss Anthony. We have with us this morning the man who was pioneer
in the Senate of the United States, in presenting a proposition for an amend-
ment to the national Constitution for the protection of women in the exer-
cise of their citizen's right to vote, and that is the Hon. Samuel C. Pome-
roy, now of this city, then of Kansas.
Mr. Pomeroy. I can hardly claim to be a pioneer, although, if Miss An-
thony will not be offended, I will say that in the early part of this century*
I was invited, one rainy evening, to the vestry of a church to hear a speech
upon woman suffrage. Up to that period I had paid no particular atten-
tion to it. I heard Susan B. Anthony, and at the close of the meeting I told
her, that I believed she was right, and, God being my witness, I have not
deviated from that position since.
I want to pay a tribute, at the beginning, to her out of respect to whom we
bowed our heads in silence. In 1856, when I had escaped prison and
reached Chicago and had spoken to the assemblies there and in Buffalo and
Philadelphia, Mrs. Lucretia Mott sent her card to have me come and dine
with her. At the table were her sons-in-law and some neighbors, and she
asked me to tell our story — the story of Kansas. Late in the evening, when
I left, she took me by the hand and said: "Go back, be faithful, and you
shall triumph." And those words have been a prophecy and inspiration to
me all my life.
As this Convention closes, in coming down from those heights to your
various fields of labor and effort, I should like to inquire, What is the future of
your effort ? I have listened here day after day to wonderful congratula-
tions. But it occurs to me that you are not going to victory on these
" flowery beds of ease." Something is yet to be done. I remember living
in a town where a mother turned her little boy out, after putting pantaloons
on him for the first time, and told him not to go into the water and mud
and dirt ; but the little boy came back shortly, having run through every
mud-puddle in the neighborhood, and she said : "Johnny, Johnny, what
have you to say for yourself? " and he answered : " Mother, there is nothing to
say. It is time something was did." We have had a season of saying.
What have we to do ? I am told that we must have a grand amendment to the
American Constitution. That is good. I hold in my hand a venerable
document which I had the honor to present to the Senate on the 7th day of
December, 1868. It reads:
Mr. Pomeroy asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to bring in the
following resolution, wbich was read twice and ordered to be printed: Joint resolu-
tion proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Be it
resolved by tbe Senate and House of Representatives of tbe United States of Amer-
ica in Congress assembled (two-thirds concurring), that tbe following article be
submitted to tbe legislatures of tbe several States, and when adopted by three-
f ourths of tbe States, shall become a part of tbe Constitution of tbe United States,
and shall be known as the Fifteenth Amendment.
♦August, 1865, in the little Congregational church in Atchison, Kansas.
Conference of the Pioneers. 349
Article 15. The basis of suffrage in the United States shall be that of citizenship,
and all native or naturalized citizens shall enjoy equal rights and privileges in the
elective franchise.
I thought then and I think now that citizenship is the only proper basis of
suffrage in this country. That evening, after 1 proposed this resolution, Mr*
Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, called on me and said he did not think the
proposed amendment was necessary. Why ? We had just got through with the
Fourteenth Amendment ; we were then living in a period of amendments. We
had just completed the Thirteenth, which was the first amendment of our day
and generation. The Twelfth Amendment was adopted in 1802, and we had
no more until 1865. I hold in my hand that Thirteenth. It was sent
to the States February 1, 1865; it was ratified December 16, 1865, and
that amendment was that " there should be no slavery or involuntary servitude
under the jurisdiction of the United States, except as a punishment for crime. ' '
Four States never adopted it ; but we had three-fourths of all the States for
it. The Fourteenth Amendment is the one that Mr. Sumner said superseded
and made a Fifteenth Amendment, which I had the honor to introduce*
unnecessary, and why? Because it starts out by saying that "All persons
born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof
shall be citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside."
And then comes the important point — that "no State shall make or enforce
any law abridging the rights of a citizen." Mr. Sumner thought we did not
need a special amendment to say the right to vote shall be confined to citi-
zens of the United States, embracing all persons, native and adopted, be-
cause the constitutional amendment which we had just adopted, said that no
State should make or enforce any law abridging the rights of a citizen. I
thought, then, as I think to-day, that if Congress would pass a law that citizens
of the United States, of a prescribed age, whether native or adopted, should
have equal right to the ballot-box, there is not a court or judge, worthy of
the ermine, who would decide against it. How much easier it is to get an
act of Congress passed, by a majority, signed by the President, than it is to
get two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-fourths of all the States
to ratify an amendment ! * * *
This country has no precedent in history for its existence. America holds
the future, and holds it because it is working out a pathway of its own.
There is nothing like our Government in human history. It is a Govern-
ment of the people ; it is a conglomeration of all the nations ; it is like the
English language, made up of every other language — a nation made up of
all nations. We are exemplifying the doctrine that God hath made of one
blood all the nations of the earth, and He has congregated them here for
the development of the grandest principles of human government.
I want to say, in closing, that this movement for equal suffrage that began
forty years ago ; and that reminds me that I was in a convention with Mr.
Douglass in 1840, in which Alvin Stewart. Beriah Green, Gerrit Smith and a
350 International Council of Women.
host of men and women of whom the world was not worthy, and I remember
Gerrit Smith saying, at the close of a remarkable speech : "It will be glory
enough for a man to say forty years hence, that he was right in 1840."
Those words have come echoing down the years, and I want to say to these
ladies and gentlemen here to-day who were right forty years ago : It is
glory enough now to be here and join in these congratulations over the suc-
cess of this movement for the education of all people. The education at the
ballot-box is the Christ of this period. It shall be the Savior of the world.
Mrs. Stanton. Mr. Pomeroy asks us what we propose to do after the
adjournment of this grand Convention. The great thing for us to do is to
get the women ready to vote, for wherever we go, the first objection that
meets us is that the women do not want to vote. We have a large number
of women assembled here to-day, and I would like to get their testimony by
a rising vote.
The audience rose en masse.
At the close of Mr. Pomeroy's address, Mrs May Wright.
Sewall stepped forward, quickly followed by Harriette Shattuck,
Laura M. "Johns, Rev. Annie Shaw, Clara B. Colby, and Rachel
G. Foster, each bearing a basket of choice flowers.
Mrs. Sewall. Madam President, even on Pioneers' Day, young people
have some rights which older people are bound to respect. The one right
we claim to-day, is that of expressing our gratitude. For what are we
grateful ? First, for the enlarged self-respect made possible to the young
women of this country, by the work of the women who have preceded us.
I suppose the youngest of this group (no member of whom professes to be
old) has, in her childhood, heard that a baby girl born to a family increased
its wealth^by $500, while a baby boy was worth $1,000. Such invid-
ious comparisons, made in regard to the occupants of cradles, did not
increase either the humility of listening boys, or the self-respect of girls.
Why has our self-respect become enlarged? Because the women on this
platform, with their compeers who have passed on, have shown that women
may possess and delight in powers which the world had logically proved that
our sex could neither possess nor support. By the direct influence of these
women ; constitutions and statutes of civil States have been modified, and
the constitutions of societies have been framed. These women have preached
sermons, pronounced orations, edited papers, and written hymns, which
have been listened to, read, and sung by thousands, nay, by millions, of
people.
But not only do we owe these beloved women the self-respect which springs
from a respect for one's sex, but we owe them for an indefinite extension of
youth. Women have always been distinguished by a desire to remain young.
Although it was a man who had the credulity to believe in the fountain of
Conference of the Pioneers. 351
immortal youth, and the vanity to fit out a fleet for the purpose of discover-
ing it, it seems to have been reserved for women to find it. I call upon this
audience to witness that the women who have graced this platform during
the morning, have discovered the fountain of eternal youth and drunk of its
rejuvenating waters. They have found that the charmed spring bubbles,
fresh, sparkling, and bright, in the fields of intellectual and moral activity.
Besides self-respect and immortal youth we are indebted to these women
for other gifts of priceless value. To them we are grateful for the large work
they have made possible to our hands, for the large hopes with which they
have filled our hearts, for the visions which their fulfillment of their own
prophecies has revealed to the most skeptical eyes. This hour is altogether
too serious, too sacred, too deep in its significance to cheapen it by one
word of adulation. For every word of criticism and opprobrium that has
been pronounced upon these women, volumes shall be written in their
praise. For every jeer and scornful laugh, and for every cynical jest, hymns
shall be chanted in honor of their memory.
Inadequately as this little group of six, expresses the feelings of the young
women of America toward these, our leaders, I would pray that you will
regard these flowers as symbolic of our affections [the flowers were then pre-
sented], and with their fragrance inhale the incense of our gratitude. But
pioneers are not always old. A pioneer is one that inaugurates a work.
These women were pioneers when they inaugurated the work that they
have done, not merely now, in the hour of its partial coronation. No one
hesitates to call Frances Willard and Clara Barton pioneers, although they
are far removed from three-score years and ten. And even in the work of
the International Council we may have pioneers. Indeed, I feel as if this
youngest of our number [taking Rachel Foster by the hand] were a pioneer.
At this moment, Rev. Annie Shaw, on behalf of the other
members of the committee, presented a gold, monogram pin,
with these words :
Miss Shaw. I have the very great happiness to say to this audience this
morning, that this youngest of the pioneers answers Mr. Pomeroy's question,
*' What are we going to do when the heads of our leaders grow gray, when
their steps become feeble, when their hands refuse to labor? " Such heads
as this, such feet as hers, such hands as she has used for us, and such a kindly
heart as she has shown in all this work, shall rise up to take the places of
those who pass on. And, as a slight token of our appreciation and love to
her, long after the Council is over, we have decided that she shall take home
with her I. C. W., that she may look at it and be reminded that there was
once an International Council of Women. We have not told her name, but
we didn't think it necessary. It is Rachel Foster, of Philadelphia.
352 International Council of Women.
Miss Anthony. There are a great many pioneers on the platform who
have had no chance to speak. Will you all please stand, that the audience
may see you ?
Here is a friend, tried and true, who thirty years ago, gave us sixty dodars
a year, to help the cause along — Albert O. Wilcox, of New York city.
And here is Clara Barton, who was the pioneer Government department
clerk here in Washington in the fifties, before the war, to say nothing of her
services in the war and in the Red Cross.
Here is Adeline Thomson, one of our oldest and best friends in Philadel-
phia.
This is Emily P. Collins, who, when she heard of the Seneca Falls Con-
vention, called together two or three of her neighbors in the little village of
Bristol, Ontario County, New York, and organized the first real Woman's
Rights Society, and who resurrected a capital letter from Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell, which you will find in the History of Woman Suffrage.*
Will the doctors stand up ? This is Dr. Hannah Longshore, who was one
of the first class graduated from the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia,
of which that noble pioneer, Ann Preston, was president ; and here are Dr.
Susan A. Edson and Caroline B. Winslow, of Washington. And this is Dr.
Ruth M. Wood who, though not a pioneer in years, is in locality ; Dr.
Wood is physician and director of the Woman's Industrial Home in Salt
Lake, Utah. And there is Dr. Pauline Morton, of my own city; though
young, and a homeopath, she is nevertheless one of the city physicians of
Rochester, and I don't believe she neglects half so many of the poor as do
her brothers holding the same office.
Will Amy Post stand up? I want all to see the woman whose house has
been the home, not only of the fugitive slave, making his way to Canada,
but of the poorest of the poor, of the unfortunate.
Mr. Douglass. I want to say that all that Miss Anthony has said of
Amy Post, and more than all she said, and more than anybody can say in
her praise, will not be too much. Her home, her house, as it has been well
said, has been the shelter of the poor and cast out. The Indian, the African,
the despised of every class, have found shelter with Isaac and Amy Post.
And I rejoice to see her here to-day, because she was the first in whose
eyes I found sympathy and from whose lips I heard words of cheer, after I
escaped from the chains of slavery.
♦With all my good intentions to present each and every one of the good friends on the stage
I missed dear Aunt Dinah Mendenhall, who, in her eighty-sixth year, attended every session
of the Council, and who was present at the first Woman's Rights Convention, held in Pennsyl-
vania, 1852. Her house, at Kennett Square, has been the home of William Lloyd Garrison
Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, Henry C. Wright, Charles Burleigh, Stephen Foster^
Joseph Dugdale, Frances D. Gage, and many, many other pioneers of both the Anti-Slavery
and Woman's Rights movements. There were, in all, forty-four persons (eight men and
thirty-six women) who wore the Pioneer's badge— a lavender ribbon, bearing the words " Pio-
neer's Day— 1848-1888," in silver letters— hence it was impossible to introduce each, individ-
ually, to the audience. S. B. A.
Conference of the Pioneers. 353
Miss Anthony. Now, I introduce to you a woman well known in Wash-
ington, a woman who, when we held our first convention in this city in the
winter of 1869, wrote a magnificent report in the New York Tribune, and
spoke kindly about us and said we were respectable people — Grace Green-
wood.
Mrs. Lippincott (Grace Green wood). I have heard of a certain Irish
disputant who once, when discussing some religious question — woman's right
to preach, or the doctrine of " original sin" (said to be '• a very good doc-
trine if lived up to") — was confronted with a very strong text from one of
the epistles of St. Paul ; but he was quite undismayed, exclaiming : " Paul,
Paul, is it. He wasn't one of the twelve ! He was an interloper, just !"
Now, I have to confess that I am not one of the original, Simon-pure,
female suffragists, enlisted under the Stanton and Anthony banner, and that
so I am an interloper among the pioneers. Yet I have always accepted and
advocated, in my way, the main principles of the society. Why I did not
long ago join it I can hardly say, except that I feared being called upon to
make off-hand speeches; feared that, not being trained to think on my feet,
I might put my foot in it. Then, I had always so many other irons in the
fire, I burned my fingers with many of them, and they were often other
people's irons ; but I have kept on tending them. Still, in this cause, I have
wielded a pen-lance, and thrust it in here and there, wherever I spied a weak
spot in the enemy's armor. I suppose I have not done enough service to
entitle me to a share in the final triumph j but I shall get there all the same.
I have something of the faith of a certain little girl, who, when reproved by
her mother for faults and short-comings, and warned that she could not attain
heavenly joys if so perverse, cheerily answered, " O yes, I will. Heaven is
big and wide, and God is going to let in a thousand naughty children, and
I'm going in along with them."
Like Artemus Ward, who was very proud of the gallant way in which his
substitute had fought and bled for his country, I have fully appreciated the
bravery and constancy of the first little band who struck for women's rights.
I like this good old term. It is like the tattered banner that has floated over a
hundred battle-fields . I honor all the old leaders, but I confess I make my lowest
salaam to Susan B. Anthony. She has dared no more than the others, but she
has been compelled to endure more. Lucretia Mott, pure and placid prophetess
of reform, disarmed rude opposition by her sweet Quaker serenity, which was
after all but a glove of velvet over a grip of steel. Stately Mrs. Stanton
has secured much immunity, by a comfortable look of motherliness and a
sly benignacy in her smiling eyes, even though her arguments have been
bayonet thrusts and her words hot shot ; while Miss Anthony, passionate
and persistent, with her " undaunted mettle and pure grit," has asked no
quarter, and certainly has received none. From first to last she has been
the target for " the slings and arrows of outrageous" journalism. Youthful
354 International Council of Women.
reporters and paragraphists have tried their 'prentice hand on her. When-
ever the mother-in-law gave out, there was Susan B. Anthony to fall back
upon. She has been a boon and a benefaction to these ingenuous young
gentlemen. I remember that about ten years ago I said to some of the
sauciest of these now in Washington : " For shame, boys; not one of you
will ever make the man she is." I hope they received the admonition
kindly, took pattern by her, in pluck and perseverance, and have amounted
to something after all. Certainly the women of this great Council have
not to complain of jounalistic discourtesy.
When I was a young girl, the only women I heard speak in public were
Quaker preachers and Methodist exhorters. The first mixed their sermons
with singing — about half and half — the second nearly shouted their hearts
out, and yet I honored them for daring to stand up and free their minds in
the awful presence of men and God. Afterwards came the inspired Pytho-
ness— Abby Kelley — the noble Grimke sisters, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, silver-voiced, crystal -souled Lucy Stone —
and the world began to spin. Ah ! the changes. It almost takes one's
breath away to think of them. A little over forty years ago, two young ladies
whom I knew, while traveling on an Ohio River steamer, came very near
being put ashore where there was no landing, for the crime of having quietly
left the dining table, from which they had seen the magnificent young ora-
tor, Frederick Douglass, rudely driven. Less than forty years ago, your
present speaker was ignominiously dismissed from the editorship of Godey' s
Ladies' Book for the dire offense of having published a little poem in the
National Era, an anti-slavery journal of this city, edited by Dr. Bailey and
John G. Whittier. When, a few weeks ago, I heard that my dear friend,
Mrs. Croly, had purchased the moribund magazine of the late Mr. Godey,
proposing to reanimate it, I said: " With her splendid business talent and
energy she may succeed, provided she changes its name; anyhow she can't
be ' fired out' at a moment's notice, being the proprietor of the whole con-
cern."
And this brings me to what I consider one of the great keys to the situa-
tion we would occupy — business capacity and training. Let women sing the
refrain of Tennyson's "Northern Farmer," " Prupperty, Prupperty ! "
Nothing will so effectually spike the enemy's guns as land and b?mk stock.
Yes, I have seen many wonderful changes, moral and political, and I expect
to see more. I hope to have the ballot before I die. Yet should it only
find me in extremis, I think it would be like me to shake the precious scrap
of paper in the face of death and the doctors, and say, " I must and will
live to use this ! "
I am a lover of fair play. In all these sessions of our grand Council only
one side of the suffrage question has been presented, and so I the more readily
yield to a request to give a condensation of the arguments of our opponents,
Conference of the Pioneers. 355
even the most able and distinguished, as contained in some verses I wrote
some years ago for one Mistress O'Rafferty, a respectable laundress, who had
been importuned by a progressive neighbor to go for the ballot, etc. Since
my long residence abroad I have been accused of being a bad American, but
you will see I am a worse Irish woman.
MISTRESS O'RAFFERTY ON THE WOMAN QUESTION.
No ! I wouldn't demane myself, Bridget,
Like you in disputing with men.
Would I fly in the face of the blissed
A postles, and Father Maginn ?
It isn't the talent I'm wanting,
Sure my father, old Michael McCrary,
Made a beautiful last speech and confession
When they hanged him in ould Tipperary.
So, Bridget Muldoon, hould your talking
About " Woman's Rights " and all that,
Sure flll the rights I want is the one right-
To be a good help-mate to Pat ;
For he's a good husband, and niver
Lays on me the weight of his hand,
Except when he's far gone in liquor,
And I nag him, you'll plaise understand.
Thrue for ye, I've one eye in mourning.
That's because I disputed his right
To take and spind all my week's earnings
At Tim Mulligan's wake Sunday night.
But it's sildom when I've done a- washing
He'll ask for mor'n half of the pay,
And he'll toss me my share with a smile, dear,
That's like a sweet morning in May.
Now where, if I rin to convintions,
WTill be Patrick's home comforts and joys ?
Who'll chine up his brogans for Sunday,
Or patch up his old corduroys ?
It we take to the polls night and morning
Our dilicate charms will all flee,
The dew will be brushed from the rose, dear,
The down from the pache— don't you see ?
We'll soon take to shillalahs and shindies
When we get to be sovereign electors—
And turn all our husband's hearts from us,
Then what will we do for protectors?
We'll have to be crowners and judges.
And such like ould malefactors, .
Or they'll make common councilmen of us,
Then where will be our characters ?
Oh ! Bridget, God save us from voting,
For sure as the blissed sun rolls,
We'll land in the State-House or Congress !
Then what will become of our souls ?
Miss Anthony. I want to call your attention to this pile of letters which
will be published in the Daily Woman's Tribune.
Here is one from Ernestine L. Rose, who addressed the legislature of
Michigan as early as 1836, demanding woman's enfranchisement. Mrs. Rose
lives in London, and is in spirit with us to-day, though too feeble to be here
in person.
356 International Council of Women.
Here is one from Prudence Crandall, the woman, you remember, whose
school-house was burned and who was mobbed and traduced in every way,
simply because she taught negro girls to read and write.
And here is a beautiful letter from that beautiful spirit, John G. Whittier,
and here is one from Elizabeth Pease Nichol, whom Mrs. Stanton, Miss
Grew, and Miss Southwick met when they were in London in 1840, and
who, on first hearing of this Council, wrote me this beautiful letter, inclosing
a bill of exchange, which has helped us along most delightfully.
And another is from Dr. James C. Jackson, of Dansville Water Cure, who
has educated vast numbers of women how to live. And here is one from
Elizabeth B. Chase, of Rhode Island, and one from Armenia S. White, of
New Hampshire. Another is from Abby Hopper Gibbons, daughter of Isaac
T. Hopper, of New York city, who sends a check because of her reverent
memory of Horace Greeley. And here is a letter from Mrs. Mary T. Gray,
of Wyandotte, Kas., with a beautiful tribute to Mrs. Nichols, the pio-
neer of our movement in Vermont as well as Kansas. And here is one
from Dr. Mary F. Thomas, of Richmond, Ind., the sister of Dr. Long-
shore, and another from the Hon. Samuel E. Sewall, of Boston, who
expected to be here, but who writes at the last moment that he and his
wife are not able to leave home. Then here is a letter from Oliver John,
son, who was one of the attendants of the early conventions in the State of
Ohio. And here is one from Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and one
from Theodore D. Weld, that glorious pioneer who, with Henry B. Stanton,
led that grand army that came out of Lane Seminary, because they had pro-
nounced themselves opposed to slavery.
This is from Lucy N. Colman, one of the earliest advocates of woman's
rights. This from Amelia Bloomer, who, through her paper, the Lily, did
much for our woman's cause in those olden days. This is from Hon. George
W. Julian, of Indiana, who presented the first Sixteenth Amendment resolu-
tion in the House of Representatives in 1868. This is a brief note from our
dear Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, who, up to the last moment, expected to be
with us. Dr. Lozier's house has been the headquarters of suffrage, in the
city of New York, the past thirty years.
One name I must mention before Mr. Hutchinson sings, and that is Frances
Wright, who was the first woman in this country to take part in a political
campaign, that of Andrew Jackson in 1828, and who was truly the pioneer
in demanding freedom for woman from the rule of priestcraft, suffering there-
for the grossest ridicule and abuse.
And yet one word of the work of Mrs. Stanton's later days. She, with
the help of Mrs. Gage, has gathered up the facts of this great movement and
put them into three huge volumes, entitled " The History of Woman Suf-
frage." If you wish to learn more of the work or of the men "and women
who did it, you will find it in these books. If the women of forty year^
Conference of the Pioneers. 357
ago had realized the importance of the things they were doing, and the
words they were uttering, they would have preserved them ; but they thought
they were doing nothing extraordinary, and the records were lost. These
volumes preserve such fragments as we have been able to gather together.
So I urge every one of you to make a solemn resolution to-day, that every
good thing which a woman does, every good society that is formed, every
organization that you have anything to do with, you will send a short postal
card or letter to Lucy Stone, as editor of the Woman' s Journal, Boston ;
to Clara B. Colby, editor of the Woman's Tribune, Beatrice, Neb.; or, to
Caroline Huling, editor of Justitia, Chicago, 'that all these things may be
preserved. Women will never be properly recorded in history, never be
properly painted on canvas, until they do the work themselves.
John Hutchinson then rendered, with all his old-time fer-
vor, a song written for him over thirty years ago by "Aunt
Fanny" Gage, "A Hundred Years Hence." He then led the
audience in singing the beautiful words of John W. Chad-
wick* to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." The meeting ad-
journed, the session having lasted four hours.
extracts from letters from pioneers.
Huntley Lodge, Edinburgh, Scotland.
My Dear Friend: As I shall not be able to take part by tongue or pen in your
Convention to be beld at Washington in March next, I beg you to accept the in-
closed little donation toward its expenses. It affords me pleasure to indicate in this
small way the interest and sympathy which I feel and have always felt in the move-
ment in your country, as well as in that of my own, which seeks to obtain for woman
the right to vote in the election of those who frame the laws, which woman equally
with man is bound to obey. Earnestly desiring that success may attend your efforts,
and that the gathering in March may give an impetus to the cause to which you
have devoted so many years of your life, even beyond your highest anticipations,
I am yours very affectionately, Elizabeth Pease Nichol.
Ernestine L. Rose, in her letter of greeting, asked that a
part of an address delivered by her in Boston in 1851, have a
place in the proceedings of the Pioneers' Conference. Some
of her words, spoken so long ago, seem like a prophecy of the
events of to-day.
While nations strive against nations, people against people, to attain the same
amount of freedom already possessed in this country, Woman is rising in the full
dignity of her being to claim the recognition of her rights. And though the first
public demonstration has been here (in America), already has the voice of woman
in behalf of her sex been carried, as it were, on the wings of lightning to all parts
of Europe, whose echo has brought back the warmest, most heartfelt responses from
our sisters there.
*******
* Hymn No. 4, page 19.
358 International Council of Women.
And, therefore, while I feel it a duty— aye, a painful duty — to point cut the wrong
done to woman and its evil consequences, and would do all in my power to aid in
her deliverance, I can have no more ill-feelings toward him (man) than for the same
errors towards her. Both are the victims of error and ignorance, and both suffer;
hence the necessity for active, earnest endeavors to enlighten their minds; hence
the necessity to protest against the wrong and claim our rights, and in doing our
duty we must not heed the taunts, ridicule, and stigma cast upon us. We must
remember we have a crusade before us, far holier and more righteous than led war-
rior to Palestine — a crusade not to deprive anyone of his rights, but to claim our
own; and as our cause is a better one, so, also, must be the means to achieve it. We,
therefore, must put on the armor of Charity, carry before us the banner of Truth,
and defend ourselves with the shield of Right against the invaders of our liberty.
And yet, like the knights of old, we must enlist in the holy cause, with a disinterested
devotion, energy, and determination never to turn back until we have conquered —
not, indeed, to drive the Turk from his possession, but to claim our rightful inheri-
tance for his benefit as well as our own.
To achieve this great victory of right over might, woman has much to do. She
must not sit idle and wait till man, inspired by justice and humanity, shall work out
her redemption. It has been well said, " Who would be free, himself must strike
the blow." It is with individuals as with nations; if they do not strive to help them-
selves, no one will help them. Man may, and, in the nature of things, will, remove
the legal, political, and civil disabilities from woman and recognize her as equal
with himself, and it will do much toward her elevation; but the law can not compel
her to cultivate her physical and mental powers and take a stand as a free and inde-
pendent being. All that, she has to do. She must investigate and take interest in
everything on which the welfare of society depends, for the interest and happiness
of every individual member, is connected with that of the whole. She must at once
claim and exercise those rights and privileges with which the laws do not interfere,
and it will aid her to obtain all the rest. She must, therefore, throw off that heavy
yoke that, like a nightmare, weighs down her best energies — i. e. , the fear of public
opinion. * * *
The priests well know the influence and value of women when warmly engaged
in any cause, and, therefore, as long as they can keep them steeped in superstitious
darkness so long are they safe; and hence the horror and anathema against every
woman that has intelligence, spirit, and moral courage to cast off the dark and op-
pressive yoke of superstition. But she must do it, or she will ever remain a slave;
for, of all tyranny, that of superstition is the greatest, and he is the most abject
slave who tamely submits to its yoke. Woman, then, must cast it off as her greatest
enemy; and the time, I trust, will come, when she will aid man to remove the politi-
cal, civil, and religious evils that have swept over the earth like some malignant
scourge, to lay waste and destroy so much of the beauty, harmony, and happiness of
mankind; and the old fable of the fall of man through a woman, will be superseded
by the glorious fact that she was instrumental in the elevation of the race toward a
higher, nobler, and happier destiny.
Oak Knoll, Danvers, Mass., March 8, 188S.
My Dear Friend : I thank thee for thy kind letter. It would be a great satis-
faction to be able to be present at the fortieth anniversary of the Woman Suf-
frage Association ; but, as that is not possible, I can only reiterate my hearty sym-
pathy with the object of the association, and bid it take heart and assurance invieW
Conference of the Pioneers. 359
of all that has heen accomplished. There is no easy, royal road to a reform of this
kind, but if the progress has been slow, there has been no step backward. The bar-
riers which at first seemed impregnable in the shape of custom and prejudice, have
been undermined, and their fall is certain. A prophecy of your triumph at no dis-
tant day, is in the air ; your opponents feel it and believe it. They know that yours
is a gaining and theirs a losing cause.
The work still before you demands on your part, great patience, steady persever-
ance ; a firm, dignified and self-respecting protest against the injustice of which you
have so much reason to complain ; serene confidence which is not discouraged by
temporary checks, nor embittered by hostile criticism, nor provoked to use any
weapons of retort, which, like the boomerang, fall back on the heads of those who
use them. You can afford, in your consciousness of right, to be as calm and courte-
ous as the archangel Michael, who, we are told in Scripture, in his controversy with
Satan himself, did not bring a railing accusation against him. A wise adaptation of
means to ends is no yielding of principle, but care should be taken to avoid all such
methods as have disgraced political and religious parties of the masculine sex. Con-
tinue to make it manifest, that all which is pure and lovely and of good repute in
womanhood, is entirely compatible with the exercise of the rights of citizenship, and
the performance of the duties which we all owe to our homes and our country.
Confident that you will do this, and with no doubt or misgiving as to your success,
I bid you God-speed. I find I have written to the association rather than to thyself,
but as one of the principal originators and most faithful supporters, it was very nat.
ural that I should identify thee with it.
I am, very truly thy friend, John G. Whittier.
To Susan B. Anthony.
No. 4 Park St., Boston, Mass., March 18, 1888.
My Dear Miss Anthony: I am very much disappointed that neither Mrs. Sewalj
nor myself will be able to attend the Council of Women at Washington. This
Council is very opportune to mark the progress which the emancipation of women
has made in forty years. * * * What has been accomplished since 1848 in the
United States is so wonderful that it is difficult to induce persons who have grown
up during that period, to believe the existence of such laws as oppressed their
mothers. I congratulate the Council on the auspicious prospects of the new era on
which we have entered. Victory is certain, though the war is not ended. Much
depends on the women themselves. What they have done is known. It gives us
good reason to think they will do more and better. And they will find more and
more devoted friends and appreciaters of the other sex.
Very truly yours, ■ Samuel E. Sewall.
Syracuse, N. Y., March, 1888.
Dear Miss Anthony: I would like very much to attend the meeting at Washing-
ton, but the infirmities of seventy years prevent. What a change in sentiment since
I used to find it difficult to find a place, even in Massachusetts, where the people did
not feel disgraced by the name of "Woman's Rights." I hope, as we become
popular, we shall also become wise, and not imitate our brothers in governmental
wrongs.
Faithfully, Lucy N. Colman.
360 International Council of Women.
Council Bluffs, Iowa, March 19, 1888.
Dear Miss Anthony: I will be with you in spirit and take my place among the
pioneers and greet you all, and in thought, go back over all those early years when
I was your co-laborer, and with voice and pen gave my feeble aid to the cause in its
infancy and days of great trial, ere it had grown so strong as to command the respect
and attention of the whole world, as it does to-day. It needed not the letter you
sent me from a friend of four-score years, to show that the Lily did a good work.
Such testimony has come to me all down through the years since its first issue to
the public. I know that all over the land there are hundreds of people who gained
their first knowledge of the principles which underlie the woman's movement, by
reading that little paper. You and Mrs. Stanton and Frances D. Gage and many
others lent helping hands to me in that work; but be sure the little messenger went
on its way with good tidings, scattering seed where our voices could not reach; and,
all over the land, we see the fruit of that labor. The motive power that directed,
guided, and controlled that enterprise was not strong or experienced; but it was
such as was needed in the infancy of our cause, and made an impression where the
stronger minds of to-day would, at that time, have failed. I gave my best years to
the work. I am glad to know that at the head of the army of recruits that have
rallied to the standard set up forty years ago, Mrs. Stanton, Lucy Stone, Antoinette
Brown, and yourself still stand, the respected and honored leaders of the host — with
armor on, ready for whatever further efforts and sacrifice may be asked of you.
May you live to see and enjoy the full triumph of your labors ! In running my
mind's eye over the list of prominent actors in the drama first brought upon the
world's stage near forty years ago, I miss many whose words were dear to us — many
who, if living, would have honored seats in your Council. Lucretia Mott, Ernestine
L. Rose, Frances D. Gage, Clarina I. H. Nichols, Paulina Wright Davis, Jane G,
Swisshelm, Jane Pierson, Emily Clark, Mary C. Vaughan, and others — pioneers all —
have finished their work upon earth and gone to their reward. Blessed be their
memory ! May we not believe their spirits are hovering over this Council with
benedictions of peace and love ? And, in your Pioneer Conference, shall not all be
remembered who gave their hearts and hands to the help of humanity, in the days
when to be identified with the unpopular movement, was to take up a cross ? Wishing
you great success, both in Council and in sessions of Convention,
I am, yours very sincerely, Amelia Bloomer.
Hyde Park, Mass., March 15, 1888.
Miss Susan B. Anthony :
My Dear Friend : My thanks for your invitation to the International Council
and the Conference of Pioneers at Washington. You add, " If it be impossible for
you to be with us in person, I hope you will be by letter, giving us a brief word of
your Angelina's and Sarah's earliest entrance upon their woman's work, and your
hearty indorsement thereof."
As prior engagements elsewhere make it impossible for me to be with you at the
time you name, I will gladly write out what you ask for.*
******
They felt profoundly that the subjugation of woman and that of the slave involved
elementally the same principle— both robbed of rights — the slave of his self -right
and thus of all rights, as all inhere in that and perish with it. The slave law, anni-
* Part of Mr. Weld's letter is omitted, because the lives of the Grimke sisters have already
been outlined by more than one of the speakers of the Pioneers' Conference.
Conference of the Pioneers. 361
hilating the man, leaves the slave a mere thing, a chattel, the slaveholder's property.
"Woman, too, is robbed of her self-right in part, and largely of her relative rights.
Throughout the subsequent career of the sisters, while the sole topic in their pub-
lic lectures was the slave question, yet in their private intercourse and letters their
testimony was frequent and uniform that man's original subjugation of woman and
his persistence in holding her thus subjugated, was and is, in spirit and principle,
slaveholding, and that the wrong thus inflicted from time immemorial, has been the
foster father and mother of all other forms of human oppression. Inklings of this
testimony to the equality of woman's rights with man's, appear variously in the
sayings and doings of both sisters ever afterward.
"VYe preface the first special public instance of this with the following statement :
In the spring of 1837 the Woman's Anti-Slavery Society of New York city, issued a call
for a general anti-slavery convention of American women, to be held there May 9, 10,
11, 12. Some three hundred women, representing ten States, were enrolled as mem-
bers, and six subjects were reported for their consideration. The first on the list
was " An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States." This appeal was
presented by Angelina Grimke, the chairmau of the committee appointed therefor,
and was published by the convention. That pamphlet has been long out of print,
but I find in Mrs. Birney's memorial of the sisters Grimke this comment upon it-
She says: " The appeal is made chiefly to woman's tenderest and holiest feelings,
but enough is said of her rights, to show whither Angelina's own reflections were
leading her. A passage or two may be quoted as examples. ' Every citizen should
feel an interest in the political concerns of his country, because the honor and well-
being of every class is bound up in its political government and laws.' 'Are we
aliens because we are women ? Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the
mothers, wives, and daughters of a mighty people ? Ours is a great moral work. '
' Wisdom crieth without, "Whosoever is of a willing heart let him bring an offering.'
4 Shall woman refuse her response to the call ? "Was she created to be a helpmeet for
man, his sorrows to divide, his joys to share, and his toils to lighten by her willing-
aid, and shall she refuse to aid him with her labor and her counsel, too, at such a
time as this ?' "
Later in the convention Angelina offered the following resolution: "Resolved,
That as certain rights and duties are common to all moral beings, the time has come
for woman to move in that sphere to which Providence has assigned her, and no
longer remain satisfied in the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and
a perverted application of Scripture have encircled her; therefore, it is the duty of
woman, and the province of woman, to plead the cause of the oppressed, and to do
all that she can by her voice, her pen, and her example, to overthrow the horrible
system of American slavery." The resolution was sustained by the mover and by
Lucretia Mott. Amendments were offered by Mary Grew and Mrs. A. L. Cox,
which called forth an animated debate respecting the rights and duties of women.
As the convention declined to pass the amendments proposed, twelve of the members
entered their names upon the records in protest against the views expressed respect-
ing the rights of woman. At the close of the convention, the sisters, at the invita-
tion of the Boston Female Anti-slavery Society, began their labors in Massachusetts.
Early in June a Massachusetts anti-slavery convention was held in Boston. Mrs.
Birney, in her memorial, says: " In writing about the convention to Jane Smith,
Angelina first touches upon the dawning feeling on the woman question. She says:
'At friend Chapman's, where we spent a social evening, I had a long talk with the
brethren on the rights of women, and found a very general sentiment that it is time
24
362 International Council of Women.
our fetters were tnoken. Lydia Maria Child and Maria Chapman strongly supported
this view; indeed, very many seemed to think a new order of things must come.
Now, my dear friend, I feel it is not the cause of the slave only that we plead, but
the cause of woman as a moral, responsible being.' " * * *
I see that I have overlooked one of your requests; thatis, my " hearty indorsement"
of their views touching the equality of woman's rights with man's. In Mrs. Bir-
ney's book I find the following extract of one of my letters to Angelina, written in
August, 1837: " As to the rights and the wrongs of women, it is an old theme with
me; it was the first subject I ever discussed. In a little debating society, when a boy,
I took the ground that sex neither qualifies nor disqualifies for the discharge of any
functions, mental, moral, or spiritual; that there is no reason why woman should
not make laws, administer justice, sit in the chair of state, plead at the" bar or in
the pulpit, if she has the requisite qualifications." What I advocated in boyhood
I advocate now — that woman in every particular shares equally with man, rights
and responsibilities. I doubt not that the foregoing is a sufficiently " hearty indorse-
ment " to pass muster.
Now, with exultant God-speed to you all, as you sit in your International Council
and Conference of Pioneers, in your grand millennial work now fast rounding on to
its jubilee,
I am, dear friend, faithfully yours, Theodore D. "Weld.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 18, 1888.
My Dear Mies Anthony: I am very sorry that unavoidable circumstances will
prevent me from attending your anniversary meeting. It would afford me the sin-
cerest and most heartfelt pleasure to join you and your worthy associates in com-
memorating the historic convention of women which assembled at Seneca Falls
forty years ago. I remember it well, for I had espoused the cause of woman'*
enfranchisement the year before, after reading Harriet Martineau's chapter on the
" Political Non-existence of "Women," in her book on " Society in America." * * *
The work done is simply amazing, and it can not fail to inspire with renewed
faith and fresh courage every friend of the great cause. All honor to its pioneers,
a few of whom yet remain to share the blessed fruition of their heroic endeavors.
" The good can well afford to wait ;
Give ermined knaves their hour of crime ;
Ye have the future grand and great,
The safe appeal of truth to time."
Wishing great success to your Convention.
I am very faithfully yours, Geo. W. Julian.
Dr. Mary F. Thomas, one of the eight who were graduated in
the first class from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsyl-
vania, writes •
My thoughts go back to a Sabbath afternoon in June, 1836, when the attention of
three young sisters was first especially called to the inequality of woman's wages,
and when they determined to " bear testimony " against this wrong. To this end
we attended school lyceumsin our neighborhood, and talked on these subjects, often
against ridicule for our silly notions. But we did not realize from our untrained
standpoint what was the true basis of the political inferiority of women until Sep-
Conference of the Pioneers. 363
tember, 1845, when our now sainted Lucretia Mott attended the Yearly Meeting at
Salem, Ohio. After the meeting some young people prevailed on Mrs. Mott to speak
on ""Woman's Education." She urged us to acquaint ourselves with the laws, and to
ask for equal political rights.
One of the girls referred to died a few years since, having done all she could to
carry out in Ohio their early resolution. The second is a physician in Philadelphia
(Dr. Hannah Longshore, present at the Council and referred to elsewhere) who has
proved the sincerity of her pledge by a life devoted to the elevation of women. The
third is your correspondent, a pioneer physician still in the harness, who does not
expect a release from labor until the equal rights of all are acknowledged, unless
sooner called from work to reward.
Mary F. Thomas.
Richmond, Ind., March 22, 1888.
Letter from Mary T. Gray, of Wyandotte, Kans., giving a
brief sketch of the work of Clarina I. Howard Nichols.
Among the most novel sights at the Territorial Constitutional Convention.* where
the presence of women was rare, was the figure of Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols. At the
right hand of the speaker, and a step lower than his platform, beside a table, sat day
after day this slender, middle-aged woman, of spare but not ungraceful figure, of
clear searching eyes and a high brow shaded with dark curls. Coming in daily on
horseback from her home, three miles distant, one found her always at her table,
sitting there patiently through the heat of the scorching July days, sometimes knit-
ting, but more often busy with pencil or pen, with her clear eyes ever on the alert
for the business before the house. She sat there, the unsolicited, self-appointed
guardian of the laws for Kansas women. She was poor, yet asked no pay and never
received any, yet every woman in the State of Kansas to-day is somewhat in her
debt for our liberal laws — for the rights and privileges of holding property, trans-
acting business in their own name, and participating in the elections and offices
under our school system in advance of the constitutions of other States. She
asked : (1.) Equal educational privileges in all the colleges and institutions of learn-
ing fostered and controlled by the State. (2.) Equal rights in the formation and
conduct of the common schools. (3.) An equal right for the mothers with the
fathers to the custody and control of their offspring. (4.) The right of the wife to
hold and accumulate property, and sue and be sued, as if sole. No other State has,
so far as we can learn, the provision that it is the right of the wife to sue in defense
of the common property, or " community fund." For want of such provision, wives
have been compelled in other States, to have guardians appointed over insane hus-
bands to defend interests, which they were competent to protect without such expen-
diture. * * * This appeal for constitutional provisions, defining and specifying,
was a novel and successful method of securing permanent measures, which no leg-
islative body could repeal. Two years later, Mrs. Nichols discovered a law specify-
ing that, in the settlement of an estate, the widow should have one-third, provided
she did not elect to take, under the provisions of an earlier date, one-half. She also
found a law giving the property of a child, who should die without a will, to the
father if living; if he were dead the brothers and sisters took the property to the
exclusion of the mother. These two facts she wrote out, and sent them for publi-
*Held at Wyandotte, Kansas, July 1859, to prepare the Constitution, under which Kansas
desired to enter the Union as a State.
364 International Council of Women.
cation in the Topeka Commonwealth and the "Wyandotte Gazette. Both laws were
amended by the next legislature. You have not time to hear of the hours of pains-
taking labor she gave; or the slights, rebuffs, and mortifications she endured as
a self-appointed delegate to a convention that had not wanted her— for the sake of
the women who did not know they wanted more than they had I * * . *
Not long since, the tireless worker for the world fell asleep. Her memory will
be kept green by all who knew and loved her. The majority of Kansas women
have never heard her name. To most of you it is to-day heard for the first time.
Yet she was one of the brave army of pioneers which forty years ago began the
work which makes this Convention possible today; which has gained for women
recognition in wages, in work, in schools and colleges. It is the hands of the tireless,
faithful pioneers, that have made the path smooth for our daughters. It is because
they braved rebuff and sneer and scorn and falsehood, that this Convention is to-day
considered respectable. Their hearts have ached, their nights been sleepless, their
paths rough that to-day's success has been achieved. God give them happiness and
long life — God bless the pioneers.
Happy Thought Cottage, North Adams, Mass., March 19, 1888.
To the Pioneer Advocates of Suffrage for Women, in Conference Assembled:
Dear Friends: I regret very much my inability to be with you at your gathering.
I know of no other movement, having in view the amelioration of mankind, with
which for forty years I have been in such sympathy, and to which, with my own
approval, I have been so strongly linked, as to that for the emancipation and enfran-
chisement of woman. * * * Woman is entitled to have her humanhood and not
her sexhood acknowledged by public opinion, by custom, by social observance, by
fashion, by religious influence, by law, and by all the authority of the State as the
predominating and guiding force for the evolvement, education, and culture of her
personality * * * Dear friends, may you whose heads are whitening under
time's bleaching, have a pleasant and profitable conference. How in memory I go
back to the day when I read the call and subsequently the proceedings of that gather-
ing you are commemorating! * * * I saw clearly then, what a prolonged con-
test would have to be waged, in order to do away with the crime of woman's enslave-
ment, and I do urge upon you who have gone through the conflicts since that day,
to impress upon those who will take up the work when you have done with it, these
ideas: (1.) That woman is human, and therefore human rights belong to her. (2.)
That her rights can not be justly qualified to man's advantage and to her disad-
vantage, because of any difference between his physical and her physical organiza-
tion. (3.) That her rights, originating in her personality, as do his in his personal-
ity, rest on the same basis as do his, and that therefore they must in the end, stand
or fall together. (4.) Urge upon them that they courageously claim to be acknowl-
edged by constitutional and statutory authority, to be equal with men before the law
eveiywhere.
I am your fellow-citizen, James C. Jackson'.
Miss Anthony. Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chase, of Rhode Island, who up to
the last moment expected to be with us to-day, sent us the following tribute
to one of our earliest and ablest advocates of equal rights for all :
The death of Abby Kelly Foster, which occurred less than eighteen months ago,
has removed from our midst one of the most remarkable women of the nineteenth
Conference of the Pioneers. 365
century. And yet, in the present generation, there are, doubtless, many persons
even among active, intelligent women who know very little of the life she lived and
the work she accomplished in the interests of humanity.
The opening years of the anti-slavery conflict, led by William Lloyd Garrison
and his few adherents, found her a modest, quiet, Quaker maiden, conscientiously
performing her duties as the teacher of a Monthly Meeting school for "Friends' "
children, in the town of Lynn, Mass. She read the thrilling pages of the Liberator
and listened to the impassioned speeches of the early advocates of immediate eman-
cipation, until the iron of the slave-holding system entered into her soul never
to be withdrawn until the last fetter was broken. With a clear insight she saw
what statesmen and theologians failed to perceive, that slavery in this land was the
Nation's guilt, and that the supporters of the system were the whole people, while
the American Church, by its silence, by its fellowship, by its defenses and apolo-
gies, was the stronghold of this great iniquity. The hammer on the auction-block,
the clank of the slave's chain, and the slave-mother's cry, sounded ever in her ears;
and her conscience, alive to the slightest intimation of wrong-doing, bade her wash
her own hands clean of this foulest of stains. Listening to the inner voice she be-
gan her labor in the cause of the slave by devoting half her salary to its service.
But ere long, impelled by an impulse she could not resist, she gave up her school
and went forth, single-handed and alone, to raise her voice in earnest pleading be-
fore all the people, that they should let the slaves go free. Long afterward, in
relating her experience, in a private conversation, I heard her say: "It was as
though I saw my neighbor's house in flames and knew that the lives of the children
were in peril. I should rush into the street and cry ' Are ! fire ! ' and do all that lay
in my power for their rescue. So it was when I heard the cries of the slave."
* * *
But the pulpit and the press were against her. First, because she was a woman,
and, second, because she attacked the slave system with the faithfulness of the
prophet Nathan, who declared to the erring king of Israel, " Thou art the man."
Mobs assailed her. Scandal sought to crush her. No epithets were too vile to be
cast upon her by New England respectability. The Society of Friends disowned
her. Had the Puritan methods of persecution prevailed at that time, she would have
shared with the early Quaker women in Massachusetts, scourgings, imprisonment,
and, perhaps, death on the gallows. But there are tortures more keen and bitter
than bodily inflictions, and these fell thick and fast on her devoted head. * * *
But she had a high and holy mission, and she pursued it cheerfully and bravely,
seldom speaking of the obstacles in her way. * * * When the American Anti-
Slavery Society needed a printing-press, and was otherwise in peril for lack of funds,
Abby Kelly, who had received from her mother a legacy of a thousand dollars,
poured it all into the treasury of the society, being glad that she had it to bestow.
For many years she made it a part of her duty to collect the money by which the
society was largely supported, asking nothing for herself and her incessant labors.
After her marriage to Stephen S. Foster, who was a man of extraordinary power as
an anti-slavery orator, and had almost suffered martyrdom in the cause, she left her
public work temporarily to become the most exact and careful of home-makers.
No household duty was ever neglected in that home, and the hospitality exercised
by her husband and herself, included not only a large circle of friends, but welcomed
and protected the flying fugitive from bondage.
When her only child was old enough to be entrusted to another's care, she took
her to New Hampshire to her husband's sister, and with a heart almost breaking at
366 International Council of Women.
the separation, she went forth again on the mission to which she believed herself
called. On her journey homeward she met a friend, who exclaimed: " How can
you leave your baby to go out again lecturing? " And she replied, almost choking
with emotion: " For the sake of the mothers who are robbed of all their children."
For many years, she alternated between her domestic duties and attendance upon
anti-slavery meetings, often traveling with her husband in such service. When the
war came, and the abolition of slavery became a military necessity, and was thus
wiped out in blood, no one rejoiced more than she, while entirely disapproving of
war, from which she, and all other Abolitionists, would gladly have saved our
nation, would the nation have listened to their appeals and followed their counsels.
The women of this land owe to this woman more than to any other human being,
a debt of gratitude for the doors she opened for them to enter; for the courage and
the conscientiousness with which, amid persecution and reviling, she made the way
clear for them to walk safely, where she encountered what to them would seem
insurmountable difficulties. Her sympathies and her strong influence were given to
all reforms — temperance, social purity, woman suffrage, and whatever conduces to
human welfare, and to all she contributed the uncompromising support of her earnest,
unwavering spirit. Let her name stand high on our record of love and honor.
Boston, March 23, 1888.
My Dear Lucy Stone: * * * It has happened that I did not see, until now,
that among the features of the International Council, is to be a gathering of the
pioneers upon the platform. I have grieved to be unable to share in the delibera-
tions and profits of the Council personally. But I feel as if it were almost to lose
my identity, altogether, not to be named among you as one of the early Ohio workers,
and one of the " present and accounted for," at the Massillon, Syracuse, and Cleve-
land conventions, as well as standard-bearer of the cause on the lecture platforms
of Cleveland, Boston, and other cities. * * * Therefore, I wish now simply to
be counted in among those of the dear old friends who survive, as they all do, I am
sure, " here or there," to dream that I feel the old-time thrill of the hand-clasp, the
magnetism of the kindred aim, and catch the "all hail" of the later recruits, and
bid them the heartiest " God-speed; " and so be on record once more among the
faithful before I go hence.
Faithfully yours, Caroline M. Severance.
164 West Forty-Fifth Street, New York, March 17, 1888.
Miss Susan B. Anthony :
Dear Friend : Feeble health will plead my excuse for not attending the Inter-
national Council, but it must not hinder me from sending you my warm congratu-
lations. I may fairly account myself among the few who welcomed the Conven-
tion of 1848, and who saw in it the beginning of one of the grandest revolutions in
the history of the human race. In the conflict for the admission of women to full
participation in the anti-slavery societies, a few years earlier, I had taken an active
part, and calm reflection upon the principles involved in that issue, led me to see
that there could be no middle ground between the conventionalism of that period
in respect to woman, and her admission to the exercise of every political right. I
was therefore prepared to respond fully and promptly to the demands made at Seneca
Falls, and, in spite of the ridicule heaped upon the convention and its authors, I
published the proceedings in the newspaper * then under my care. * * *
* The Anti-Slare?T/ Bugle, at Salem, Ohio.
Conference of the Pioneers. 367
God bless the brave and noble workers, every one, say I, and give them the cour-
age and patience to carry on their cause to its final triumph. The welfare and
advancement of our common humanity, and the glory of the Republic, are involved
in it. The struggle has proved longer and harder than I anticipated, but the end.
on that account, will be all the more glorious.
Yours, in hope and confidence, Oliver Johnson.
Cambridge, Mass., March 17, 1888.
Dear Miss Anthony : Absence from home has delayed my reply to your letter.
Thank you for your invitation to the celebration at Washington, but I shall be so
•engaged at that time that it will be out of my power to attend. Those who took
part in the early convention have certainly seen great results follow. In regard to
education and general legislation, the greater part of that for which we asked, has
been gained. In regard to woman suffrage, the progress has been slower, as was
natural; yet this progress has been constantly accelerated, so that the last ten years
have shown more visible results than the previous thirty. Equal suffrage for the
sexes is, in my judgment, a necessary part of the evolution of human society. I
expect that it will be attended, like all the great enlargements of the suffrage, by
temporary mistakes, inconveniences, and drawbacks, as well as by great and
permanent benefits. But it is as sure to come as is the earth to roll round on its
axis.
Yours very truly, Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
From one of the originators of Sorosis, and, next to the
sainted Alice Cary, its first president — Mrs. Charlotte B. Wil-
bonr, now residing in Paris.
My Dear Miss Anthony: The invitation which I have just read induces retro-
spection, excusable in one who distinctly remembers the convention to which this
Council offers an anniversary. For I am no convert to the faith of the equality of
the sexes before the law, or to the larger possibilities of our woman nature. No, I
was born in the church, of parents who recognized my right to be all that the human
being, man or woman, may be, without legal hindrance. My birth membership of
the meeting may explain the fact that I am so much a laggard in the rear of the
army, but I always note with pride and satisfaction the efficient zeal of the converts,
and often ask if they are not the more fortunate of the crusaders. Born for to-day, after
the old-fashioned stiles and fences have been, perhaps, clumsily jostled down, but
levelled, nevertheless, and the practical results of agitation, protestation, and path-
making have been achieved, and the old methods recorded for the warning, sugges-
tion, and encouragement of these better educated and more evenly cultivated women
of this hour.
The brave philanthropy of the justice-seeking women of the Seneca Falls Conven-
tion of 1848 will receive the grateful recognition of the independent workers in
departments of labor and skilled service conquered for women since that date.
The women of 1888 have come out of their rose gardens to pay their willing tribute
to the grafters and seed-sowers of 1848 !
In this land of Egypt, country of degraded women, the elevation of our American
women seems so great that my hands lift themselves in amazement at a contrast so
terrible, and my heart is filled with rejoicing and exaltation as I number the steps
that even forty years of faithful effort have cut in the stony mountain of error an^
prejudice. In accepting invitations from the officials of Upper Egypt, my daughte
r
368 International Council of Women.
and I make request to be presented to the ladies of the harem, and the majority of
them say to us that they never before conversed with foreign ladies. We find it
very difficult to select subjects for conversation of which they know anything. The
atmosphere of custom and religion is too heavy for the white wings of the bearer of
glad tidings of good-will to women. The black mantle of the prophet adorns the
man and is the funeral-pall of the woman.
But to my country I turn in hope and cry, all hail to the breaking day in the new
land, where the men and women shall stand together in religion, in society, in the
family, and in the State.
And while you, my good sisters, are hastening on this day of equality, I say God
speed you.
Charlotte B. Wilbouk.
On the Nile, Upper Egypt, Africa.
Mathilde F. Wendt sends from New York her greetings to
the Council, and begs that the work of Madame Anneke may
be remembered, since it was she who contributed so much to
the German Revolution of 1848. In that year Carl Schurz
and this brave woman, forced to leave their Fatherland,
sought in America the freedom denied them at home. To
him, our nation opened the way to every honor, save only the
ighest; to her it denied even the exercise of the natural right
of self-government.*
* For Madame Anneke see " History of Woman Suffrage." Vol. I., 571 ; Vol. II., 374 ;
393 ; Vol. III., 646.
rrt?'
SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1888.
EVENING SESSION.
POLITICAL CONDITIONS.
Invocation by Mrs. Ormiston Chant.
Mrs. Stanton. The first speaker of the evening is Helen Gardener, who
is to give us an address on the Brain. You know the last stronghold of the
enemy is scientific ; men have decided that we must not enter the colleges
and study very hard ; must not have the responsibility of government laid
on our heads, because our brains weigh much less than the brains of men.
Dr. Hammond, of New York, has published several very elaborate articles
in the Popular Science Monthly to prove this fact. But Miss Gardener has
spent about fourteen months in investigation, and has conferred with twenty
able specialists upon the subject, and will give us to-night the result of her
investigation. She will show to us that it is impossible to prove any of the
positions that Dr. Hammond has maintained.
SEX IN BRAIN.
Helen Gardener. The political conditions of woman are very greatly
influenced to-day by what is taught to her and about her by those two con-
servative moulders of public opinion — clergymen and physicians. Our law-
makers have long since ceased to merely sneer at the simple claim of human
rights by one-half of humanity, and for refuge they have flown to priest and
practitioner, who do not fail them in this their hour of great tribulation. It
is true that men, most of whom never enter a church, have grown somewhat
ashamed to press the theological arguments against the equality of the sexes,
and to these the medical argument has become an ever-present help in their
time of trouble.
In the early days woman was under the absolute sway of club and fist.
Then came censer and gown, swinging hell in the perfumed depths of the
one and hiding in the folds of the other thumb-screw and fagot for the
woman who dared to think. At last the theory of the primal curse upon her
head has grown weaker. Mankind struggles to be less brutal and more just.
Manly men are beginning to blush when they hear repeated the well-worn
fable of the fall of man through woman's crime and her inferiority of posi-
tion and opportunity, justified by priest and pleader, because of legends in-
herited from barbarians — mental deformities worthy of their parentage.
When religious influence and dogma began to close their terrors, legal en-
actments were slowly modified in woman's favor and hell went out of fashion.
Then Conservatism, Ignorance, and Egotism, in dismay and terror, took
counsel together and called in medical science, still in its infanc y, to aid in
370 International Council of Women.
staying the march of progress which is inevitable to civilization and so neces-
sary to anything like a real republic. Equality of opportunity began to be
denied to woman, for the first time, upon natural and so-called scientific
grounds. She was pronounced physically and mentally incapable, because
of certain anatomical conditions, and she must be prevented — for her own
good and that of the race here — from competition with her mental and
physical superiors.
It was no longer her soul, but her body, that needed saving from herself.
Her thirst for knowledge the clergy declared had already damned the souls
of a very large majority of mankind — in a hereafter known only to them.
The same vicious tendency, the doctors echoed, will be the ruin of the
physical bodies of the race in this world, as we are prepared to prove. The
case began to look hopeless again. Opportunity must be denied, these doc-
tors say, because capacity does not exist. Where capacity seems to exist, it
is, it must be, at the expense of individual health and future maternal capa-
bilities.
As a person, she has no status with these consistent believers in "equal
rights to all mankind." As a potential mother only, can she hope for con-
sideration either by religious or medical theorist. This has been a difficult
combination to meet. Few who cared to contest their verdict, possessed the
bravery to fearlessly face the religious dictators, and fewer still had the ana-
tomical and anthropological information to risk a fight on a field which as-
sumed to be held by those who based all of their arguments upon scientific
facts, collected by microscope and scales and reduced to unanswerable sta-
tistics.
The priest, reinforced by the doctor, promised a long and bitter struggle,
on new grounds, to those who fought for simple justice to the individual,
aside from her sex relations ; who wished for neither malediction nor mercy ;
those who claim only the right of a unit to enjoy the common heritage un-
trammeled by superstition and artificial difficulties. They do not ask to be
helped — only not to be hindered. They had hailed science as their friend
and ally ; and behold, pseudo-science adopted theories, invented statistics,
and published personal prejudices as demonstrated fact. All this has done a
vast deal of harm to the cause of woman.
Educators, theorists, and politicians readily accept the data and statistics
of prominent physicians, and, in good faith, make them a basis of action. while
the victims of their misinformation have been helpless. It is, therefore, very
important to learn, if possible, just how far medical science and anthropology
have really discovered demonstrable natural sex differences in the brains of
men and women, and how far the usual theories advanced are gratuitous
assumptions, founded upon legend and fed by mental habit and personal
egotism.
I began an investigation into this matter a little while ago by questioning
Political Conditions. 371
the arguments and logic of the medical pseudo-scientists from their own basis
of facts. I ended by questioning the facts themselves, upon the evidence
furnished me by leading members of the profession, some of whom are known
in this country and abroad as leaders in original investigation as brain stu-
dents and anatomists. None of these gentlemen knew the aim or motive of
my inquiries, and they gave me all the information to be had on this subject
without bias and quite freely. The specialists and brain students to whom
my questions were submitted, were of widely different religious beliefs, which,
of course, colored their theories as well as their motives, either consciously
or unconsciously.
But the profession has reason to be proud of the ability of most of these men,
no less than of their sincerity and willingness to confess to ignorance of facts
where proof was lacking. The abler the man the more willing was he to do this.
One or two tried to explain, and, as it seemed to me, to force an agreement
between scientific facts which they did possess, and their inherited belief in
"revelation." Others, who did not themselves recognize it, performed the
same mental gymnastics from mere force of habit, and gave a black eye to
their facts in preserving a blind eye to their faith. But in the following re-
sults are to be found the opinions of eminent medical men, some of whom
are Roman Catholic, some Protestant, and some of the negative systems of re-
ligion. So far as I know, not one is a believer in "Woman Suffrage," nor
even in the more radical but less comprehensive measures for her development.
Not one, who touched directly upon the subject, believed in sex equality in its
entirety or had not personal prejudice and long-cherished sentiments opposed
to it, if his reason approved. By some of them this was frankly stated, even
while giving facts in her favor. Not more than one, so far as I know, is
"agnostic " in religion or a believer in evolution in its entirety.
I have mentioned these latter points, because I found in this line of inves-
tigation, as in all others, that a man's religious leanings inevitably color
and modify all of his opinions, and govern his entire mental outlook. They
iven add bitterness to his " jalop" and fizz in his " seltzer." If he abso-
lutely believe in the " Garden of Eden " story he deals with "Adam " as a
:reature after " God's own heart and in his image," and therefore capable
ind deserving of all opportunity and development for and because of him-
self, and to promote his own happiness. "Eve," of course, receives due
ittention as a physical, anatomical specimen, "with intuitions" — a mere
>one or rib of contention, as it were, between man and man. The more
>rthodox the man the bonier the rib. The more literal and consistent his
faith the less likely is he to deal with woman as an intellectual being, capable
)f and entitled to the same or as liberal, mental, social, and financial oppor-
tunities or rights as are universally conceded to be the birthright of man,
ind quite beyond farther controversy in his case. Evidence in her favor
lust be overwhelming, indeed, then, which can not be evaded if an inves-
372 International Council of Women.
tigator starts out handicapped with the theory of " revelation" as a part ot
his mental equipment, and with the " sphere of woman " formulated for him
by the ancient Hebrews.
I went to the men whom the doctors themselves told me were the best
authority to be found on the subject of brain anatomy and microscopy. One
of these men, Dr. E. C. Spitzka, of New York, was referred to by physicians
of all schools of practice as undoubtedly the best informed man in America,
and second to none in the world, in this branch of the profession. They,
one and all, told me that what he could not tell me himseif on this subject,
or could not tell me where to find, could not be of the slightest importance.
I have been asked to tell you just what I started out to learn, and how far
I succeeded. But before I do this it may not be out of place to tell you an
anecdote of my experience in this undertaking : I went personally to about
twenty of the leading physicians of New York with my questions. I had
them submitted in other ways to many more in this and other cities. I got
written communications from the Old World as well as the New. Nearly
every one of these twenty, after very kindly telling me what he himself knew
and what he believed on the subject, referred me to the same man as the final
appeal ; but not one of them was willing to introduce me to him. They
would introduce me to anybody and everybody else, but they did not like to
risk sending me to him. He was, they said, utterly impatient of ignorance,
and might treat me with scant courtesy. He would very likely tell me flatly
that he could not waste time on so trivial a matter — that I and everybody
else ought to know all about " sex in brain."
Now, this is a secret — I would not have it get out for a good deal. It
took me a long while to get my courage up to go to that man without an in-
troduction— a thing I did not do with any of the others. I finally, with fear
and trembling, made up my mind to learn what he knew on this subject or
perish in the attempt. So I took my life in my hands, put on my best
gown — I had previously discovered that even brain anatomists are subject to
the spell of good clothes — and went. I fully expected to be reduced to
mere pulp before I left ; but he listened quite patiently, asked me a few ques-
tions as to why I had come to him ; told me to read him my questions ;
asked me sharply, " Who wrote those questions?" I said meekly, " I did."
He looked at me critically, wrote something on a card, and dismissed me.
1 was uncertain whether, he had been so kind in his manner, because he con-
sidered me a harmless lunatic or not. Once in the street I read the card.
I was to call again when he could give me more time.
I went not once, but many times. I devoted some months to brain anat-
omy and anthropology. In his laboratory he had brains from those of a
mouse to those of the largest whale on record. He showed me the peculiar-
ities of brains as shown by microscope and scales. He looked up points in
foreign journals to which I had not access. In short, he did all he could to
Political Conditions. 373
aid me ; and he said that no such investigation as I was trying to learn about
had ever yet been made, although no fair record of the difference of sex in
brain, of which we hear so much, could possibly be made without it. He
was delightfully frank, earnest, and thoroughly honest. He knew — and,
what is better, he was willing to tell — where knowledge stopped and guessing
began; a point sadly confused, I found, by even prominent members of the
profession. " I do not know," was a hard sentence to get from a doctor so
long as he was under the impression that others of his profession would
know. " I do not know ; nobody knows," came freely enough from the
man who was sure of the boundaries of investigation, who recognized the
vast difference between theories and proof. From him, and through him, I
collected material that is of intense interest and importance to woman in this
stage of the movement for her elevation.
It is only right that I say here that I am of opinion that he does not him-
self believe in the equality of the sexes, but he is too thoroughly scientific
to allow his hereditary bias to color his statements of facts on this or any
subject. In the hands of a man who has arrived at that point of mental
poise and dignity, our case is safe, no matter what his sentiments may be.
Such men do not go to their emotions for premises when it comes to a state-
ment of scientific facts. There are writers on this subject who do. As
you all know, any statement calmly and persistently made is reasonably sure
to be accepted as true, even by its victims. Frequency of iteration passes
as proof.
Even thoughtful men, after spending years of time in trying to explain
why a thing is true, often end with the discovery that it is not true, after all.
We are all familiar with the story of the wrangle of the philosophers as to
why a vessel containing water weighed no more with a fish weighing a pound
in it than it did after the fish was removed. After long and acrimonious
debate over the principle of philosophy involved, some one bethought him
to weigh them, and, of course, discovered that no unfamiliar principle was
involved, since it was a simple misstatement as to facts.
The assumption of " divine rights " by kings and priests stood as unques-
tioned facts for centuries by those who 'vere the victims of both. The
" divine right " of men rests still on the same bare-faced fraud, and is sim-
ply the last of this interesting trinity to die, and it naturally dies hard, as
its fellows did. If a charlatan loudly asserts that he can do a certain thing,
no matter how unlikely that thing is, if he insists that he has done it often,
he will find many believers who will spend much time in an attempt to ex-
plain how he does it, while only the few will think to question first if he
does it.
Upon this basis of calm assumption on the one side, and credulous accept-
ance on the other, has grown up a very general belief that there are great
well-defined natural anatomical differences between the brains of the
374 International Council of Women.
sexes of the human race ; that these differences are well known to the medi-
cal practitioner or anatomist, and that they plainly indicate inferiority of
capacity in the female brain, which is structural, while, strangely enough, no
one argues that this is the case in the lower animals. It therefore occurred
to me to question — admitting that the microscope and scales really do show
the differences to exist in adults — whether it would not be fair to assume, at
least, that they are not nitural and necessary sex differences, but that they
are due to difference of opportunity and environment, and, under like con-
ditions, would be produced between members of the same sex; that since
this superiority of brain in the male sex is said to appear in the human race
only, where alone, in all nature, superior opportunities and environments are
held as a sex right and condition by the males, that the so-called " superior-
ity of structure" is simply better development of the equally capable but
restricted brain of the other sex.
I proposed to test this by an appeal to the brains of infants. And my as-
sumption, although not new, appeared to be borne out by the accepted,
though unproven theory, that the brains of the men and women are nearer
alike the lower we go into the human scale. This assumption is clearly based
upon the idea that where the mental opportunities of the men and women
are nearer equal the physical results are also similar. Indeed, Topinard
plainly states this fact in his Anthropology. He says : " The reason that
the brain of woman is lighter than that of man is that she has less cerebral
activity to exercise in her sphere of duty. In former times it was relatively
larger in the department of Lozere, because then the woman and man
mutually shared the burdens of the daily labor. The truth is that the weight
of the brain increases with the use we make of it." Since women are not
given diversified and stimulating mental employment, they can not be ex-
pected to show the results of such training on the brain itself.
I was started on my work in this matter by several articles written by the
boldest of the medical men in this country, who is the leader of the medical
party which claims to be opposed to the educational and political advance-
ment of women because of the inevitable injury to her physical consitution.
The writings of such a man, aided by the circulation and prestige of the
leading journals of the country, which publish them as authoritative, must
inevitably influence school directors, voters, and legislators, and go far to
crystallize the belief that facts are well known to the medical profession,
with which it would be dangerous to trifle, when the truth is that the posi-
tive knowledge on the subject is not sufficient at this moment to form even
an intelligent guess upon. In spite of this fact the well-known physician of
whom I speak, Dr. Wm. A. Hammond, reiterates in these articles all of the
old, and adds one or two new, arguments to prove that woman should not be
allowed to develop what brain she has, because she possesses very little and
even that little is of inferior quality.
Political Conditions. 375
Professor Romanes, who is said by many to stand second only to Herbert
Spencer in his branch of science, has also recently published a very exten-
sive paper on mental differences of the sexes and the proper education of
woman, which is, unfortunately, but most likely honestly, based upon this
same assumption, under the belief that it was a proven fact. His paper has
been very widely copied in spite of its extreme length, and the fact that the
same journals " absolutely can not find space " for even a moderately long
one on the other side. The editors say, " The public is not interested in
it" — that is, in its correction. I mention these two men not because they
are peculiar in, but because they are honored representatives of, the so-called
scientific school of objectors to human equality, and claim to base the right
of male supremacy upon important scientific facts.
Of course all this is an old assumption and as such has been dealt with
before. But Dr. Hammond now boldly asserts that these differences are
easily discoverable by microscope and scales, and that they are natural, neces-
sary sex differences. He claims : (i.) That woman's brain is inferior toman's
in size and quality, and, therefore, in possibility. (2.) That these marks of
inferiority are natural and potential, and not produced by environment.
(3.) That they are easily recognizable in the brain mass itself. (4.) That
in consequence of these natural organic and fundamental differences the
female brain is incapable of, first, accuracy; second, sustained or abstract
thought ; third, unbiased judgment (judicial fairness); fourth, the accom-
plishment of any really first-class or original work in the fields of science, art,
politics, invention, or even literature. He points out the great danger to
woman herself, and to the race, as her children, if she is allowed to attempt
those things for which the structure of her brain shows her to be incapaci-
tated.
From this outlook it is easy to see that the non-professional voter, the
school director, and the legislator might really feel it to be his duty to pro-
tect woman against her own ambition. It is in this way that the assertions
of such men can, and do, cause the greatest injury to woman. There are a
number of other indictments ; but for the present let us examine these.
First, in the matter of size, the doctor concedes that the relative size and
weight of the brain in the sexes is about the same, slightly in woman's favor,
which he says does not count ; although, when he finds this same difference
between men, as between higher and lower races, he argues that it does count
for a great deal. But in the dilemma to which this seemed to reduce him in
proving his case, he says : " Numerous observations show beyond doubt that
the intellectual power does not depend upon the weight of the brain relative
to that of the body so much as it depends upon absolute brain weight."
Now, if this were the case, an elephant would out-think any of us, and the
whale, whose intellectual achievements have never been looked upon as abso-
376 International Council of Women.
lutely incendiary (if we except Jonah's friend), would rank the greatest man on
record, and have brain enough left to furnish material for a fair-sized female
seminary.
The average human male brain is said to weigh from 1,300 to 1,400
grammes, and even a very young whale furnishes 2,312 grammes of " intel-
lect-producing substance," as the doctor felicitously terms it, while the brain
of a large whale weighed in 1883 tipped the beam at 6,700 grammes.
Truly, then, if absolute brain weight and not relative weight is the test, here
was a " mute inglorious Milton," indeed. Almost any elephant is several
Cuviers in disguise, or perhaps an entire medical faculty.
The doctor says : " The female brain, however, is not only smaller than that
of man, but it is different in structure, and this fact involves much more as
regards the character of the mental faculties than does the element of
size." Again he says : " Thus accurate measurements show that the anterior
portion of the brain, comprising the frontal lobes, in which the highest
intellectual faculties reside, is much more developed in man than in woman,
and this not only as regards its size, but its convolutions also. Now, the
part of the brain which is especially concerned in the evolution of mind is
the gray matter, and this is increased or diminished in accordance with the
number and complexity of the convolutions. The frontal lobes contain a
greater amount of gray cortical matter than any other part of the brain,
and they are, as we have seen, larger in man than in woman."
Accepting these sweeping statements for the moment — although many of them
are questioned by the highest authority — would it not be fair to test the case as
to whether this difference in adults is fundamental and prenatal, or whether
it is the result of outside artificial influences, by an appeal to the brain of
infants. If the brains of one hundred infants (each child weighing ten
pounds) were examined, would the brains of the fifty males be distinguishable
from those of the fifty females ? In other words, when the weight of the body,
the age, and other conditions are the same as to health, parentage, etc., and
before the artificial means of development, educational stimulus and oppor-
tunity are applied to the one and withheld from the other, could the sex be
determined by the difference in brain, weight, shape, size, quality, or con-
volutions? That would be the test, although it would not allow for the ages
of hereditary dwarfage of the one, and healthy exercise of the brains of the
other sex; but, as an opening, I was willing to stand on that test. It was in
pursuance of this idea that I caused the following questions to be submitted to
a large number of the leading brain students of America, went myself somewhat
into the study of anthropology, and collected from several countries certain
bits of information as to just how much basis there is for all this cry about the
difference in men's and women's brains. Being a matter of heads, I wanted
to know how much was "cry" and how much was "wool."
These are the questions submitted to the doctors, brain anatomists, an
:d
id
Political Conditions. 377
microscopists at the outset of my task: (i.) Is it known to the medical pro-
fession whether in infants (of the same age, size, health, and inheritance at
birth) the quantity, quality, and specific gravity of the gray matter differs in
the sexes? Does the relative amount of gray matter differ? (2.) Do the
convolutions? Form? Actual amount of gray matter differ? (3.) Given
the brain, only, of a number of infants of the same age, weight, etc., could
the sex be determined by the difference in shape, quantity, quality, and con-
volutions? (4.) If so, are the differences more or less marked in infants
than in adults ? Is the frontal region of the brain larger and more developed
in male than in female infants? Is the difference as marked as in adults?
(5.) Does use, training, etc., develop gray matter, change texture, size,
shape, etc., of the brain mass, or are these determined and fixed at birth?
The same as to convolutions? (6.) Does use have to do with the location
of the fissure of Rolando, or is that fixed at birth ? In an uneducated man
would there be as much of the brain in front of this fissure as in a man of
trained and developed mind? (7.) Does use or development of the mental
powers change the specific gravity of the brain mass ? Would it be the same
in a great scholar as in a common laborer of the same general size and health ?
(8.) Is there unanimity of opinion on these questions? Are the facts known
or only conjectured ? (9.) If ten boys of the same weight, health, and gen-
eral inheritance were taken in infancy and five of them subjected for fifty
years to the conditions of a street or farm laborer, while the other five re-
ceived all the advantages of the life of a scholar, would the ten brains present
the same relative likenesses at death as at birth? Would opportunity and
mental exercise make a change in the brains of the five students that would
be discoverable by microscope and scales?
In reply to the last question, the universal opinion was that it would be
fair to assume that such difference would be perceptible. But one of the
replies was that these points must necessarily remain only conjectural, since
we can not do as the Scotch villager who shows to a wondering public the re-
lains of a famous criminal, with this bit of history: " This is the skull and
)rain of a man who was hanged, at the age of forty, for murdering his entire
imily. This is the skull and brain of the same man at the age of seven.
7ou can readily trace in the boy the man that was to be." Since it might
)e looked upon with disfavor if we were to attempt to brain people from time
to time in an effort to discover the effects of culture upon the fissure of
Lolando, we must base all such arguments upon reason and analogy. Is it
lot a fair presumption, since reason and analogy lead to this universally ac-
cepted theory as between man and man, that the same causes would produce
the same results when applied between man and woman? Strangely enough,
this is not held to be the case by these acute reasoners against sex equality in
)rain.
But to illustrate once more the necessity of questioning facts first and
25
378 International Council of Women.
the reasons for them afterward, I am assured by the most profound and
capable students of these branches of science, that if such differences exist
in the brain of infants as are indicated by my questions, it is not known
to those who make a specialty of brain study; but, upon the contrary, the
differences between individuals of the same sex — in adults, at least — are
known to be much more marked than any that are known to exist between
the sexes. Take the brains of the two poets, Byron and Dante. Byron's
weighed 1,807 grms-> while Dante's weighed only 1,320 grms., a difference
of 487 grms. ; or take two statesmen, Cromwell and Gambetta. Crom-
well's brain weighed 2,210 grms., which, by the way, is the greatest healthy
brain on record — although Cuvier's is usually quoted as the largest, a part of
the weight of his was due to disease, and if a diseased or abnormal brain is to
be taken as the standard, then the greatest on record is that of a negro, criminal
idiot — while Gambetta's was only 1,241 grms., a difference of 969 grms.
Surely it would not be held because of this, that Gambetta and Dante should
have been denied the educational and other advantages which were
the natural right of Byron and Cromwell. Yet it is upon this very ground,
by this very system of reasoning, that it is proposed to deny women equal
advantages and opportunities, although the difference in brain weight
between man and woman is said to be only 100 grms., and even this does
not allow for difference in body weight, and is based upon a system of
averages, which is neither complete 'nor accurate. There is, then, not only
no proof that the sex of infants could be distinguished by their brains, but
all of the evidence which does exist on this subject is wholly against the
assumption.
Up to this point in my investigation I learned only what I had fully
expected to learn. At the next step, and in connection with it, I met with
information which seems to me to offer an opportunity for reflection upon
the matter of mental — not to say verbal — accuracy in the sex which does
not wear "bangs." In the papers referred to, Dr. Hammond asserted, and
no male voice or pen has seen fit to publicly correct him, that " it is only
necessary to compare an average male with an average female brain to per-
ceive at once how numerous and striking are the differences existing between
them." He then submits a formidable list of striking differences which
include these : " The male brain is larger, its vertical and transverse diam-
eters are greater proportionally, the shape is quite different, the convolu-
tions are more intricate, the sulci deeper, the secondary fissures more
numerous, and the gray matter of the corresponding parts of the brain
decidedly thicker." ,
But as if all these were not enough to enable the merest novice to dis-
tinguish the one from the other, even if he were near-sighted, he offers
these reinforcements : " It is quite certain, as the observations of the writer
show, that the specific gravity of both the white and gray matter of the brain
Political Conditions. 379
is greater in man than in woman." This would seem to leave woman
without a reef to hang to ; for if by any chance her brain did not fall short
in gray matter, the specific gravity of the rest of it would enable the doctor
to ticket her as accurately as though she were to appear with ear-rings and
train in a ball-room. Of this point this is what the leading brain anatomist
in America wrote me: "The only article recognized by the profession as
important and of recent date which takes this theory as a working basis is
by Morselli, and he is compelled to make the sinister admission, while
asserting that the specific gravity is less in the female, that with old age and
with insanity the specific gravity increases." If this is the case, I don't
know that women need sigh over their short-coming in the item of specific
gravity. There appear to be two very simple methods open to them by
which they may emulate their brothers in the matter of specific gravity if
they so desire. One of these is certain, if they live long enough, and the
other — well, there is no protective tariff on insanity. But to finally clinch
his argument, Dr. Hammond continues : " The question is, therefore, not
so much that of quantity" (which appears to collide with his statement
that it was the '• absolute brain weight " which was the sublime test, and
drops my whale into the water again), " as it is of quality. The brain of
woman is different from that of man in structure."
Again I applied my test. Does all. this difference of structure and
quality appear in the infant or only in the adult brains? Since it is held
that these very differences are the ones produced by education and properly-
diversified mental stimulus — as between man and man — is it not fair to as-
sume that like causes produce like results as between man and woman ?
Since woman has never had the advantages of these brain-developing proc-
esses, is it not fair to assume, if all these differences do exist, that it is less
a matter of natural and characteristic inferiority than of environment and
opportunity, unless it exists in the same ratio in infants? That would be
the test as to whether these are natural, necessary, pre-natal sex characteris-
tics, or whether they are developed by external circumstances and environ-
ment. The physical sex characteristics, which are natural, are as readily
distinguished at birth as at maturity.
But after a woman's waist and brain are put into tight laces and shaped to
fit the fashion, it is a rather poor time to judge of her natural figure, either
physical or mental. There was but one reply to my questions. It was this :
No such test has ever been made with the brains of infants, and the wildest
imagination could only stand appalled at the effort. It would be impossible
to distinguish the male from the female child by these " radical, natural,
easily-discovered sex differences" in brain. I held, then, that the inference
was perfectly legitimate that the great and numerous differences in the brains
of adults, in so far as that was not, also, a mere flight of fancy, was not nat-
ural, pre-natal, and necessary, but that it was certainly fair to assume it to
380 International Council of Women.
be producible, by outside measures or environment, and that it could be no
more natural nor desirable, for the digestive organs and the brain of one sex
to be decreased and deformed by pressure, than it is for those of the other.
But I confess I was wholly unprepared for the final result of my last ques-
tion and argument. I discovered that these differences are not only not
known to exist in infants, but that in spite of all the talk, the pathetic warn-
ings, and the absolute statements to the contrary, that in a like number of
adult brains such differences are not only not to be " perceived at once,"
but that if Dr. Hammond or anybody else will agree to allow me to furnish
him with twenty well-preserved adult brains to be marked in cipher, so that
he will not have his information before he makes his test, he will find that
his " numerous, striking, and easily perceived " differences will not appear
with any relation to sex, so far as is known at the present time. I made
this offer to him through the Popular Science Monthly some six months ago.
Up to date the twenty brains I offered him to try on have not been called
for. Upon the contrary there will be found greater difference between
individuals of the same sex than any known to exist between the sexes in any
and all of these test characteristics ; that, in the main, since women weigh
less than men, it would be pretty safe to guess that most of the lighter brains
belonged to the women, but that this test would prove wrong in many cases,
and that the others would fail utterly.
I asked them why they did not correct the general impression which men
of their profession had given out in this matter. They said they did not see
the use of it; what difference did it make, anyhow? And then it was a
good enough " working theory." I said, " But suppose it worked the other
way, do you think that you would say that it made no difference, and that a
working theory that worked all one way was a safe or an honest one to put
forth as an established fact? " " Well, we are willing to tell you the truth
about it," said they; "the fact is, it is all theory as yet ; there has not
been a sufficient number of tests made to warrant the least dogmatism in the
matter; what more can you ask of us than that?" What, indeed?
I made another discovery; it was this : The brain of no remarkable woman
has ever been examined ! Woman is ticketed to fit the hospital subjects and
tramps, the unfortunates whose brains fall into the hands of the profession,
as it were, by mere accident ; while man is represented by the brains of the
Cromwells, Cuviers, Byrons, and Spurzheims. By this method the average
of men's brains is carried to its highest level in the matter of weight and
texture; while that of women is kept at its lowest, and even then there is
only claimed ioo grammes difference ! It is with such statistics as this, it is
with such dissimilar material, that they and we are judged.
Finally, I discovered that there is absolutely no definite information on
the subject now in the hands or books of the medical profession which can
justify the least show of dogmatism in the matter ; or if it were on the other
Political Conditions. 381
side, would not be explained entirely away in five minutes, and there would
not be the least question as to the desirability of the explanation, either. They
told me not only that they did not know, but that no one could possibly know
upon the statistics and with the instruments in the hands of the profession
to-day.
This being the case, perhaps it will be just as well for women to take a
hand in the future investigations and statements themselves, and I sincerely
hope that the brains of some of our able women may be preserved and exam-
ined by honest brain students, so that we may hereafter have our Cuviers and
Websters and Cromwells. And I think I know where some of them can be
found without a search-warrant — when Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, and
some others I have the honor to know, are done with theirs. Until that is
done, no honest or fair comparison is possible. At present there is too
great a desire on the part of these large-brained gentlemen, like Dr. Ham-
mond, to look upon themselves and their brains as "infant industries,"
entitled to and in need of a very high protective tariff, to prevent anything
like a fair and equal competition with the feminine product.
But the fact is that we have heard so much on the one side about woman's
physical and mental short-comings, and on the other side, from our prohibition
friends and others, so much of the moral delinquencies of men, that it seems
to me that we are in danger of believing both. And I, for one, am begin-
ning to feel a good deal like Mark Twain's Irishman, whenever I hear either
one discussed. He had been having a controversy with another man, and,
as a final "clincher" to his side of the argument, said, with emphasis:
"Now, I don't want to hear anything more from you on that subject but
silence — and mighty little of that."
Allow me to read the closing paragraph of a letter to me from Dr. E. C.
Spitzka, the celebrated New York brain specialist, to whom I am greatly in-
debted for much valuable information :
You may hold me responsible for the following declaration : That any statement
to the effect that an observer can tell by looking at a brain, or examining it micro-
scopically, whether it belonged to a female or a male subject, is not founded on care-
fully-observed facts. The balance and the compasses show slight differences ; the
weight of the male brain being greater, and the angle formed by the sulcus of
Rolando, forming a larger expansion of the frontal lobes; but both these points of
difference have been determined by the method of averages. They do not necessa-
rily apply to the individual brain and hence can not be utilized to determine the sex
of a single brain, except by those who are willing to take the chances of guessing.
The assertion that the microscope reveals definite characteristic points of difference
between the male and female brain is utterly incorrect. No such difference has ever
been demonstrated, nor do I think it will be by more elaborate methods than those
we now possess. Numerous female brains exceed numerous male brains in absolute
weight, in complexity of convolutions, and in what brain anatomists would call the
nobler proportions. So that he who takes these as his criteria of the male brain
may be grievously mistaken in attempting to assert the sex of a brain dogmatically.
382 International Council of Women.
If I had one hundred female brains and one hundred male brains together, I should
select the one hundred containing the largest and best developed brains as probably
containing fewer female brains than the remaining one hundred. More than this no
cautious, experienced brain anatomist would venture to declare.
Miss Anthony. I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs. Ashton
Dilke, delegate from the Women's Liberal Association of Newcastle-on-
Tyne.
Mrs. Dilke. I have always been impressed by the political importance of
women's voting. It has seemed to me that whatever great advances were
made by women in education, in philanthropy, in science, or in any other
branch of learning, they yet risked everything being swept away if their
rights and their privileges and all that they had won were not backed up by
a political vote. We have had, both in England and in the United States
of America, many years of peace, and it is hard to grasp the idea that in
times of war and revolution, political liberties that are not defended by a
vote, may be swept away as if they had never existed ; whereas where con-
stitutional government, either in the form of a constitutional monarchy or
in the higher form of a republic, is established, once the war is passed, the
voter steps to the ballot-box again, and liberty and law resume the sway they
held before.
There are two radical differences between political life in England and
America. One of these differences is the fact that you have a written Con-
stitution of your liberties — a Constitution I myself as an English woman, will
admit one of the grandest the world has ever seen. That Constitution
it would take brave men to attack, but it also would take a considerable
amount of political agitation to make constitutional changes. In England,
much as the Conservatives in the past were wont to talk of our grand consti-
tution, no such thing exists at all; that is to say, the English constitution
consists of those laws that are passed by Parliament from year to year. And
therefore it has always seemed to me easier in England to obtain such a con-
stitutional change as the question of women's suffrage involves. I am quite
aware that there is a greater safety about your system of a written constitu-
tion. But from the women's point of view, who wish a constitutional
change, there are advantages in having an unwritten constitution, that maybe
changed from year to year. The whole tendency of public life in England
during the past fifty years — in fact, it almost exactly coincides with the reign
of our present sovereign — has been a series of measures intended to democ-
ratize English institutions. We have been gradually increasing the number
of persons holding votes; but at the present moment men even, have not
universal suffrage in England. There is still a qualification for the vote
there, and there are still large numbers of men unenfranchised, and I have
found some of the greatest sympathy for the disfranchised women, among
those men who remain disfranchised.
Political Conditions. 383
Believing in the democratization of English institutions, and wishing to
see in the end universal adult suffrage for men and women alike, I am ex-
tremely anxious that we may obtain the enfranchisement of some women
while there are some men disfranchised. While only a part of the men are
enfranchised, it is possible for us to ask for only part of the women to be en-
franchised ; and if you knew how tied down by precedent the English gov-
ernment is, if you knew how fond the English nation is of going step by
step, and trying each step and wondering^ if they shall not go back upon it,
you would realize that it is possible in England to obtain the temporary
enfranchisement of a small number of women, with the hope in the future
of enfranchising the whole.
In the great extension of local government that is going on in the British
Isles, Parliament is overburdened with work. Instead of having two
chambers to divide the work between, they have one chamber of hereditary
legislators, who sit for a couple of hours in the afternoon and then adjourn
for dinner, and do no work at all, while the other chamber is overburdened.
It is absolutely necessary in England at the present time, to find some means
of relieving the House of Commons of its work, and that is being done by a
large extension of local government. Women have already got their foot
into this local government. It is sometimes said it is so dangerous to take
the first step. In England women have taken the first step ; although no
women vote for Parliament, yet a very large number do vote in local affairs,
that is, the "spinsters and widows."
The three principal votes are —
ist. The municipal vote; that is to say, all towns in England and Scot-
land, with the exception of London, which have municipal institutions,
allow the unmarried and widows to vote. This does not apply to Ireland.
2d. With regard to the schools, the same classes vote for what we in England
call school boards ; that is, a sort of parliament governing school affairs in
these towns. In these school boards the women not only vote for the mem-
bers sitting, but they hold positions themselves, and a large number of women
have been returned as members of the school boards. The very first woman
returned was in London, Mrs. Garrett Anderson, well known as a doctor.
She is a sister of Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett. The possibility of return-
ing women to the school boards is very much assisted by the fact that they
are elected by a cumulative vote ; that is to say, if five members are to be
elected for the board, each elector has five votes, and may give all to one
candidate. That has enabled a small number of women voters to return the
women candidates. And it certainly is a very interesting fact to find that
the women do, as a rule, vote for the return of women to the school boards.
3d. There is another large question on which women in England have
votes. There is an immense amount of poverty in England, and we have a
Poor Law for dealing with that poverty. The Poor Law Guardians can be
384 International Council of Women.
either men or women, and those who elect them are both men and women.
In all these cases it is only widows and spinsters who may vote for the
return of women to these boards.
It is not only very important to find large bodies of women voting all
over the country, but to know that women are very anxious to take even-
opportunity of exercising such vote, whenever they can do so ; for we find
that the proportion of women voting is fully equal to the proportion of men
voting. The principle of women voting in local affairs, is now so estab-
lished that no government, whether conservative or liberal, can bring in a
bill for the extension of local affairs without including the enfranchisement
of women. That was very well seen in the last government of Mr. Glad-
stone, when Sir William Harcourt brought in a bill for the reform of the gov-
ernment of London, the only unreformed municipality remaining in England.
That bill, which, I am sorry to say, did not pass, would have enfranchised
the women of London, although Sir William Harcourt himself is notoriously
opposed to woman suffrage. And so, again, I had no sooner set foot in
America, than I took up a newspaper that gave an account of a local govern-
ment bill brought in by the present government. The present government
of Lord Salisbury is very conservative, and, by some persons, thought to be
very reactionary; and yet, on account of the support, of a body of men in
the House of Lords, known as the Liberal Unionists, the Conservatives them-
selves have been obliged to extend local government to the counties of En-
gland, to establish in the counties something like the municipal government
in the towns; and throughout the counties of England it enfranchised the
same body of "spinsters and widows." And, of course,. with the majority
that Lord Salisbury commands in both Houses, there is no doubt that, before
the present sitting of the House of Commons is finished — that is to say, about
August next — a very large body of women will be enfranchised in this way
alone.
We have already been told from this platform, by a lady from Canada,
that in a province of Canada not only is there local franchise for women, but
that unmarried women vote also for the local Parliament. There is one
other little piece of the British Dominions that has already obtained women's
suffrage ; peculiarly enough, that very small and almost forgotten piece of
the British Islands is called the Isle of Man.
A Women's Suffrage bill has been brought many times into the House of
Parliament ; it has had some very distinguished leaders — some of the ad-
vanced Liberal party — such men as John Stuart Mill, Jacob Bright, Leonard
Courtney, and Mr. Woodhall, have devoted many years of their lives to
forwarding the enfranchisement of women.
It is found that as the unmarried women have been enfranchised for local
affairs, it is very much easier to obtain a bill enfranchising unmarried women
for parliamentary affairs as well ; and, therefore, the bill which is at present
Political Conditions. 385
before the House of Commons, and which, I am glad to say, obtained a con-
siderable majority in the last Parliament, but which never yet has been passed
in all its stages in either the House of Commons or House of Lords, is for
the enfranchisement of "spinsters and widows." That, you see, is follow-
ing pretty closely upon the other precedents. There is a divided opinion
as to whether only unmarried women ought to be enfranchised, but this has
been the result of a compromise; it was found that that could be obtained,
and it was very difficult to say whether any other bill would be as well re-
ceived in the House of Commons ; and when it was found that a large sec-
tion of the Conservative party, as well as of the Liberal party, were willing
to support the bill for the enfranchisement of unmarried women, it was then
arranged that the bill should have on its back the names of an equal number
of Conservative and Liberal members, and that is the bill that is at present
waiting for consideration before the House of Commons.
A great work has been done in the past by Women's Suffrage Societies all
over England. They have had to pass an immense amount of ridicule and
abuse; but at the present day there is more tolerance of woman suffrage.
Some years ago, when I first took an interest in the matter, it certainly was
not so. Opinion seemed to be very sharply divided as to whether woman
should have the parliamentary suffrage or not ; but at the present day there
is a great deal of toleration, and I put down the toleration that it has obtained
of late, very much to the action outside of the Woman Suffrage Society
itself. For in England women take a very large part in politics. Women
work at the elections very much in the way that men do. Women canvass
and make speeches, not only for their husbands, and brothers, and fathers,
but for any candidate in whom they are interested. And women have banded
themselves together for both sides in politics, to work directly for liberalism
or for conservatism. On the Conservative side those women are called the
" Primrose League," and on the Liberal side they are called the " Women's
Liberal Association; " and Mrs. Gladstone herself is president of one of those
Women's Liberal Associations which I have the honor to represent here
to-night.
The Primrose League — that is to say, the Conservative ladies — have a most
tremendous list of titles among their numbers, duchesses and countesses, and
they have done woman suffrage the advantage of simply abolishing one old
stock argument against us, an argument you must have heard in this country,
as we have had it constantly in ours, the argument that politics did not con-
cern women. They used to tell us, and we were especially told this by Con-
servative men, that the polls was no place for women ; but now that the
Conservative party have gone down on their knees to every lady, begging
her to come and help them, they have been obliged, for very shame, to give
up using such arguments as this, and women are openly interested in poli-
tics.
386 International Council of Women.
A great deal was said by the speaker that preceded me, of the right to vote
being included in the American Constitution. When first women's suffrage
came before the English public, great efforts were also made to show, that as
far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth women had voted for Parliament,
and that it was only during the wars, in the time of Cromwell, that the right
to vote had fallen into disuse, and that it was, in fact, only in the beginning
of the present century that they had been disfranchised, in so many words.
If women's suffrage could have been obtained in that way, it would have
saved us a great deal of trouble, but for my part I am quite content that the
legislature in our country should pass women's suffrage deliberately; whether
women voted, in the past or not, it is quite certain that the men of the
country never at any time intended in England that a large number of
women should vote. Their voting was accidental, and I myself am quite
content to remain without the franchise until it shall be given to the whole
country. I should like to have the women's suffrage bill passed deliberately,
so that we shall be entirely enfranchised — women of all classes. This would
recognize their right more publicly than if we had been able to creep in by
any back door into our constitution.
I think the women's suffrage question was put forward very much among
the wealthy women of England by the last reform bill, which was brought
in by Mr. Gladstone with the object of enfranchising the agricultural people,
and all the working men who lived outside the parliamentary boroughs.
When that bill was before the House of Commons it was considered by
the Women's Suffrage Society and by the Members of Parliament who sup-
ported their views, that it would be very wrong to let the bill pass without
entering a protest in behalf of women's suffrage. It was very much the
same thing that happened here in your country, at the time of the anti-
slavery reform, when the woiren were compelled to allow the slaves to be-
come rulers and they await their time. We women were appealed to on
every hand in England, to stand aside and let the bill pass for the en-
franchisement of these agricultural people and laborers, and wait for our
turn another time ; but the brave supporters of our cause in the House
of Commons, moved an amendment to this great reform bill, and I am
proud to say that in spite of every effort made by the government of the day,
to prevent Liberals from voting, they went into Parliament and voted for
women's suffrage. The refusal on that occasion to enfranchise women,
had a very great effect on the opinion of the well-to-do women of the
country, for that bill contained a clause especially enfranchising domestic
servants ;. it was called the " service franchise." You see in England it is a
complicated system for deciding who shall vote and who shall not vote. There
is the labor franchise ; there is the lodge franchise, that enfranchises men
living in lodgings ; and there are other franchises for different classes of
people. And Mr. Gladstone himself, put a clause in this bill enfranchising
Political Conditions. 387
servants, and it was called the service franchise. I do not think anything
could have convinced rich women more than this, that their footmen, their
butlers, waiters, and gardeners were all enfranchised by it, while they were left
out.
We in England have had to fight with many of the old arguments that
you have been so affected by, and among them is one which I sometimes
call the physical force argument — that women can not fight, and therefore
should not vote. I should like you to remember a particularly curious fact
in regard to that argument. Until a short time ago people said to me con-
stantly, " You can not vote because you can not defend your country." But
there was another law that declared that when you were a policeman or a
soldier, and therefore defended your country, you were especially excused
from the ballot-box. So the logic was not on the side of those who declared
that we could not vote because we could not defend our country ; because
we were not police or soldiers. That law has been altered to a certain extent
now, because a certain number of soldiers and policemen are able to exer-
cise the franchise to-day. But they do not vote because they are soldiers
and policemen ; they vote because they come under the category of house-
holders ; they vote as citizens and not as soldiers and policemen, and there-
fore the argument holds good that the question of enfranchisement should
not obtain upon one's ability to defend one's country.
There is another point I have heard from this platform — the question whether
home life would be in any way affected by the political activity of women.
And I, who have always been intensely interested in home life, who have
had an intense belief in its sanctity, I would be the very last person
to do anything in my power to weaken any such influence as that. I
believe that the introduction of political interests into the home, will rather
increase the intelligent interests in everything that women undertake ;
therefore I advocate this, for this reason as well as for every other
reason.
Since I have been in this country I have heard many persons express
disapproval of your system of universal suffrage. If I could assure Amer-
icans that in our country we see the disadvantages on the other side ;
that we have been working for fifty years for the enfranchisement of
every man and woman of every class, because we have seen the disad-
vantages of partial suffrage — I should assure you that I believe that no such
blow could be given to the principle of democratization, as to see our
great sister across the Atlantic taking away even the very smallest tittle of
enfranchisement, from any who have come to her shores. We are accustomed
to turn to your country to see the advantages of popular enfranchisement.
And I can not but repeat the words — that it would be the greatest blow
to our labors in these days, to withdraw any small part of the enfran-
chisement which your country grants, if you were for a moment to think
388 International Council of Women.
of disfranchising the small company even of those who come to this
country. It is a grand fact — the equality of America; it is a fact that we
are realizing more and more every day as we come to your land and you
come to ours. We hope before very long we shall be able to enfran-
chise some, even if only a few, women, and give an example to the countries
on both sides of the splendid political work that women are able to accom-
plish, and I hope that the time will be very short in coming.
The paper of Baroness Alexandra Gripenberg, who was too
ill to attend the Council, is here presented.
WOMAN'S WORK IN FINLAND.
It is told about a rich man that the only picture in his grand ban-
quet-room, was that of a child, poorly dressed, and with a piece of dry
bread in its hand. He wished it to be a sermon without words for him-
self and his guests around his rich table. You, ladies and gentlemen,
you, the children of grand America, old rich England, glorious France,
Germany, Italy, India! you are sitting at the rich man's table. I am going
to show you the picture of a poor child — I am going to tell you a few words
about Finland, that little, forgotten corner of the world, where the youngest
and most unknown among old Europe's daughters live. Finland has had a
hard lesson to learn, being for centuries the battle-ground for Russia and
Sweden. Whatever civilization was sown during some years of peace, was
again destroyed by long and bloody wars. The hard climate created famines,
the famines created the plague, and those two took what the wars had left
of manhood, youth, and health.
What was the position of the forgotten nation during those long periods of
endless wars? What was the position of the Finnish women? History is silent,
as she generally is, concerning women ; but no doubt they took their part in
those dark days. The poets speak of woman's beautiful destiny, to heal with
soft hands the warrior's wounds, far from the noisy battle-ground. But we
all know that in reality her position is worse than that. There is, however,
one reason why we may hope that the Finnish woman's position was miti-
gated by one circumstance. Deep in the Finnish national character there
is a greater admiration for spiritual superiority, than for physical strength,
and already in our old, national epic, Kalevala, he who conquered his enemy
by his words, was a greater hero than he who won the victory by his sword. I
think this is always a good sign for us women, the physically weaker part of
humanity.
The Finnish women's legal position was, of course, the same as prevailed
in Sweden, to which country it belonged until 1809. In the thirteenth cen-
tury they obtained the right of inheritance, which was confirmed by law in
1734. Sons, however, inherited two-thirds and daughters only one-third
of their father's property. A woman was always considered a minor, unless she
Political Conditions. 389
became a widow, and a wife was in absolute dependence upon and subjec-
tion to her husband. As to education, scarcely anything was done for women ;
but the Protestant clergy, at a very early time, began to demand instruction
in reading the Bible for every one, and, of course, even the women shared
this blessing. It is also known that several schools, as early as 1684, received
girls, who were occupied with reading, writing, and the catechism.
Exhausted with her heroic struggles against Russia, Finland went to sleep
after the annexation in 1809. When she began to awake, many questions
were pressing upon her. Six hundred years of Swedish rule had given to
her upper classes the stamp of Swedish civilization. Although the bulk of
the population (six-sevenths) were Finns, speaking an entirely different lan-
guage, they were obliged to send their children to Swedish schools, if they
wished to give them education. The law courts were all carried on in Swed-
ish, even when the case to be tried, and the criminal to be judged, were
Finnish. But the awakening sense of nationality began to remove these
grave disabilities, which threatened to create artificial boundaries between
the people and the educated classes. Many women joined this patriotic
work, but many more devoted themselves to a deep, religious movement,
which spread through Finland in 1840. It raised and united them by its
profound, spiritual influence, but at the same time left them indifferent to
their social or legal positions. Every attempt to raise themselves had been
condemned as irreconcilable with Christian views. The women were silent,
not daring, not wishing to look further than their home duties. Their
thoughts were simple and quiet, like the lonely lakes in their fatherland, and
they scarcely dreamed of any other responsibilities, than those concerning
the husband's dinner and the childrens' clothes.
But Fredrika Bremer came, and with her a fresh breeze, which moved the
surface of those calm waters. The seed which that noble woman planted
reached also Finland. Her " Hertha " roused sharp discussions, which were
the beginning of the present movement, and Miss Adelaide Ehrenrooth, the
first Finnish authoress upon the woman question, made her appearance. In
1863, a bill was passed, which granted an unmarried woman's majority at
twenty-five, but on application to the local authorities, and if no reasonable
objection is made to her request, it is possible for a young woman at twenty-
one to obtain a special certificate of majority. In 1878 women obtained the
right to equal inheritance with their brothers.
The friends of women, however, concentrated their work upon the higher
education of girls. In 1795 tne ^rst girl's high school had been established
by the State, which afterward increased the number of these schools. The
capital, Helsingfors, had one of seven classes, and the country towns, sev-
eral of four classes. But as long as the education they gave was only ele-
mentary, and none of them led to the University, we women thought we
had a right to complain. In 1873 some University teachers opened a
390 International Council of Women.
woman's academy in Helsingfors, but the attempt failed, as the young women
had not sufficient solid preparation, and had no right whatever to examina-
tions or further study in the University. We continued to demand higher
education. In a little country it is easier to make ourselves heard, and some-
times, the last months before the gathering of the Parliament, our intelligent
and enterprising women decided to have an article upon the higher education
in every newspaper over the whole country, all in the same week.
In 1882 the ladies of Kuopio, led by Miss Backlund, Mrs. Canth, and
Mrs. Stenius, issued an appeal to their countrywomen to support a scheme
for higher education of girls. This appeal was wickedly called an " ingenious
stupidity," and people laughed at us women, who gathered in large public
meetings to discuss the question ; but the State now appointed a committee
for the organization of the girls' high schools. Two high schools with co-
education, and both leading to the University, were established by private
societies. Since that, every new year has won us some new victories. The
State does not yet wholly maintain any co-educational high schools, but
gives grants to several of them. Besides that, it at present maintains eight
Swedish and six Finnish girls' high schools. The University is still closed
to us, the clerical party being its faithful watchers ; but bills for the legal ad-
mission of women to the University, are introduced to every new Parlia-
ment, and we hope soon to take this last fortress.*
By special permission we, however, can enter the University, and twelve
ladies have passed its degrees. Between 1870 and 1880 our first lady doctor
of philosophy, Miss Emma Astrcem, and our first lady physician, Miss
Rosina Heikel, took their degrees. Miss Astrcem is lecturer in a college
and Miss Heikel is appointed physician for women and children of the
poor, in Helsingfors. Those young women, who do not go to the University,
enter a college or " pedagogical class," as we call them, when they have
finished their high schools of seven classes. In the colleges they stay three
years, and there they also can be prepared to be teachers in girls' high
schools and some kinds of boys' schools. In that case they, however, have
to pass an examination in pedagogy before the professor in that science.
Girls who wish to undertake practical work, enter needlework, industrial,
commercial, and dairy schools. The daughters of the people obtain a good
and thorough education during six or seven years in the public schools,
which are partly free. The State has maintained these schools since 1865 ;
there are at present 173 for girls and 465 mixed. It is significant that every
year scores of young women from the best families, undertake the public-
school teacher's hard work, for which they are preparing themselves in
special training-colleges of four years' courses. It is the same if the mother
* Since this article was prepared, three houses in our Parliament, namely, the Nobility, the
Bourgeoisie, and the Peasants, have passed the bill for the legal admission of women to the
University. The clergymen, by a small majority of their number, opposed it. Women are also
permitted to become members of the Poor Law Committee.
Political Conditions. 391
is dressed in silks or wears poor clothes, if only she is a loving mother, and
so we Finns love our poor, dear Finland with a burning patriotism, and our
highest wish is to make the whole nation happy and free from the yoke of
ignorance.
' As to female employment, we have comparatively great liberty. Women
occupy situations in the post and telegraph offices, as clerks and cashiers
in the civil service, banks, railways, newspaper offices. Many are shop-keep-
ers, or occupied in printing and book-binding, and as heads of workshops.
They can be teachers in all kinds of girls' and in several boys' schools. It
is not unusual that a woman is a tutor in languages throughout all the classes
in a boys' high school. It must be remembered, however, that they never
receive the same salaries as men, even for identical work. I don't know if
it is true, but people have told me that in a school board in the country, the
members allowed twenty dollars a year for the food of the male teacher's
cow, but only fifteen dollars for the female teacher's cow. I think it was
rather hard for the poor cow, who had to suffer for the sex of her owner.
As to the Finnish women's rights as citizens, the have had they munic-
ipal vote over the whole country, since 1879. They are also members on
school boards for all girls' and mixed schools, and possess the right to pub-
lish newspapers, and the country seems not to have been in any danger since
we obtained these rights.
Since 1863 bills and petitions affecting women have been introduced to every
new legislative assembly. As to married women's property, we have not yet
won more than just a step forward, " as much as is consistent with mainte-
nance of the husband's authority."
In literature we have many good friends. I will only mention our much-
beloved poet, Topelius, who, as long ago as 1840, wrote an eloquent
appeal to the Finnish mothers to share in the great national work of teach-
ing the neglected and despised Finnish language to their children. " With-
out women," he said, " no great idea can be left as an inheritance to future
generations." He, also, as the rector of the University, attempted to open
it for women, but political changes in Russia checked his efforts.
Among the women themselves Miss Ehrenrooth and Miss Ongelin were
the earliest writers, subsequently followed by Mrs. Canth, Mrs. Loefgren,
Mrs. Stenius, Miss Hagman, and other ladies. Mrs. Canth's powerfully-
written drama, "A Workman's Wife," filled the National Theater evening
after evening, with a deeply-moved public, and at once made the question
of married women's property, the question of the day. We are few workers,
but we are a brave set." There is a saying that if you tell Finnish ladies
about some disabilities concerning women in your country, they will look at
you with great surprise and ask, " But why do you allow it? " quite as if it
was in your power to remove them.
In 1884 Mrs. Elizabeth Loefgren and other ladies founded the "Finnish
392 International Council of Women.
Women's Union," which I have the honor to represent at this Council. It
was looked upon with great suspicion at first by the general public. " What
do these ladies want?" asked the conservatives. " Why can not they be
married off at once and have done with it?" But we did not mind; we
only worked. At first we started an office for promoting the employment of
women — one department for ladies, the other for servants. We then sent a
petition to the town council of Helsingfors to appoint a lawyer for the poor,
by which poor wives might obtain legal aid and advice without payment, in
the troubles caused perhaps by a drunken or unfaithful husband. Once a year
we publish a review called Excelsior, a volume of about 200 pages, printed
in Swedish and Finnish, both of which languages are spoken in Finland. We
also offer prizes for the best essays on questions concerning the enfranchise-
ment of women, and arrange lectures and publish pamphlets. As our
strength is limited in a little country, we can not divide our efforts, but deal
with all subjects affecting women. Our permanent committee for the dress
reform, arranges lectures and exhibitions of. dress models. This question is
of grave importance for our poor nation, living in a cold climate, where it
ought to be the women's duty not to repeat the follies and luxuries of richer
nations living in warmer climates.
Public opinion in Finland towards us, is changing wonderfully, and people
frequently tell us that they are not our enemies, only slow friends. Many
women, who from religious or other motives do not join the suffrage work,
are active supporters of temperance or social purity work, these questions
and also that of co-education, being at present subjects of great interest for
the whole country. We expect to find many good workers for the cause of
women in the generations growing up under their influences. True, con-
servatism on one hand and materialism on the other, put difficulties in our
way, but we never doubt that the victory will be ours. It is true we Finns
are a little slow; we like to know people thoroughly before we make friends.
But when we once grasp your hand, we hold it fast through thick and thin.
And in a poor nation, with a hard time behind her and an uncertain future
before her, man and woman are more nearly equal. The woman becomes more
the honest, faithful fellow-worker than the toy, and the grave questions of life
find easier places to sow their seeds. And if we women only are earnest in
our belief, earnest in our work, nothing can withstand us. If there is truth
in an idea, nothing can withstand it. When you see the large snow-fields of
Siberia, with their endless ice and snow, and you see nature dark, silent,
mourning, you think she is the captive of an eternal winter. But let the
spirit of the spring work his silent work, and nature will break her yoke
irresistibly, gloriously, and you shall see those same desolate fields covered
with the sweet blossoms of the Arctic- spring.
Political Conditions. 393
WOMAN'S RIGHTS IN DENMARK.
By Kirstine Frederiksen, of Copenhagen.
It was the social and political storms of the French revolution which
aroused Mary Wolstonecraft and generally called forth an examination of
woman's position in society ; and it was the movement of 1848 in Denmark,
giving to men their political rights, which drew attention to the question of
woman's rights. Under the pseudonym of Clara Raphael and in the form
cf a collection of letters, Miss Mathilde Fibiger, a girl of nineteen summers
(1830-1872), gave a general outline of those demands for woman's personal
independence which afterwards, by other persons and under other forms,
have received more precise and more definite expression. She was evidently
strongly moved by that national enthusiasm which, during the three years'
war with Germany, pervaded the whole Danish nation, and for a time her
book was borne along by that current. But when the enthusiasm subsided,
and her ideas were viewed as purely practical issues, they met with an over-
powering opposition. She was actually forced to lay down her pen and she
sought rescue in a practical position ; she became the first female telegraphist —
a position at that time, by no means agreeable.
Miss Pauline Worm (1825-1883) had stronger nerves. Always ready for
battle and everywhere at hand when needed, she fought bravely with pen and
tongue for woman's rights. Before her no woman in Denmark had dared
to appear in public as an orator ; she broke the spell. Nevertheless, though
her poetical talent and the clearness of her intellect ought to have given her
rank among our best men, she had to wear out her life as a school-teacher in
the provinces. Another atmosphere was needed ; the barometer must fall
before birds will fly. Those two women stood as outposts so far in the front
of their time, that they could not expect to live and see the victory.
Some progress, however, came with the political reorganization of 1848.
In 1857 daughters acquired equal rights of inheritance with sons, and, like
men, women became of age at the twenty-fifth birthday. In i860 an impor-
tant step was taken toward opening up the way for women to economical inde-
pendence ; they were admitted to graduation and appointment as teachers in
the public schools. Miss Pauline Worm had often agitated this question in
her own circle, but it was Bishop Monrad, at that time Minister of State,
who, without any connection with said agitation, took up the matter, made
it a practical issue, and carried it through. Gradually people began to be
used to see ladies as clerks in the offices, private as well as public.
With 1870, which year is generally designated as a literary new-birth in
Denmark, a brighter day also began to dawn over woman. John Stuart
Mill's book was translated by Dr. Brandes and extensively read. The
poets — Jens Hostrup, Bjornson, Ibsen, etc. — took up the question of
woman's rights, and treated it in their best books and from a very liberal
point of view. In 1879 women were admitted to the University — that is,
26
394 International Council of Women.
to participation in the highest education the State offers. Most, however,
of what has been done in Denmark for the education of women, is due to
one single lady, Miss Natalie Zahle, who, without any support from the State,
has created an institute of female education which far exceeds any of the
schools for boys which the State maintains with such great sacrifice of money.
During the war with Germany, 1 863-1 864, women asked to be allowed to
nurse the sick and wounded, but in vain ; none but male help was tolerated
in the hospitals. But in 1875 an organization of female nurses was founded,
and in 1876 a Danish division of the Red Cross was established. In the
same year women began to form associations with the purpose of fighting
the public prostitution, protecting animals, and, first and foremost, improv-
ing the general social position of women.
Five young ladies, four singers and a cornetist, then gave
the song, "The Yellow Ribbon," words by Marie Le Baron.
Miss Anthony. I now present Mrs. Zadel B. Gustafson.
Mrs. Gustafson. * * * In Europe, or to speak more definitely, in
Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, and Great Britain, my
observations have led me to conclude, that, although in all these countries,
and particularly in Great Britain, agitation is going on in the direction of
conditional woman suffrage, yet, were it secured, it would not, for some
considerable period, mean more than an accession of subservient force, to
the power and purposes of the male political organizations of those coun-
tries; while, from what I have observed in this, my own country in former
years, and within the last fortnight of this significant year, I am led to be-
lieve that woman suffrage would mean, adding to its present political strength
an alliance with kindred force, an alliance which would bring to it a pre-
ponderance of the trained moral impulse, the loving courage, mental lucidity
and intuitional, spiritual wealth which will ultimately everywhere, be the
special contribution of woman's ballot to political and social progress. * * *
American civilization is not merely a new civilization ; it is, so far,
the new civilization of the world. Its life, scarcely distended or dis-
turbed by its vast and various influx from the veins of nearly all other
human races, is like that of all childhood, elastic, swift, full of heat and
motion, and thereby differentiated from all previous civilization into one
that brims with the possibilities which give birth to and establish ideals,
which by essentially transcending must disregard the old — if their claim be
only that of antiquity — to make way for the new. * * * If my conclu-
sions are correct, obviously, the women of America have special, heavy
responsibilities in this matter of proving woman's citizenship to be a ques-
tion, not of sex immunity nor sex responsibility, but of race progress.
To rightly consider and rightly act upon this responsibility, let us remem-
ber at the start and bear steadily in mind during all the way to our goal, that
Political Conditions. 395
woman suffrage is not a question of whether we shall use political power more
or less wisely than men ; of whether we are greater fools, more dupeable or
more purchaseable than they ; it is not a question of whether the majority of
women yet know enough to want it, or whether the best women will ignore
the right and the worst women use it when it is gained ; it is not a question
properly affected by any of the arguments or debates pro or con as to our
fitness in body, brain, heart, or tendency — in balancing which, so much time
and force have for so many years been expended. It is only and exactly
what it has been from the first — a simple question of whether the ballot is
useful to mankind as a proper instrument in the management of human affairs.
If it is, then it is as useful for women as for men, and is their right
and their responsibility on all grounds which make it such for men.
Let us stand to this position until we have won its fruits. It is impregna-
ble. By holding to it ourselves and keeping our opponents, both women
and men, to this point, we save time, we save force, and we promote con-
viction by concentrating, with the threefold power of our simplicity, single-
ness, and resolution — opposition and advocacy alike upon the single, central
truth.
The first thing we want for the race is health, sanity of body and mind. We
want these before all things else, that we may secure all other good by means of
these. We have heard, during this memorable week, a various and forcible pre-
sentation of the evils which sap the physical, mental, and spiritual life of the
race, and threaten, if not overcome, to degrade humanity even beyond our
marvelous powers of recuperation. And we have listened to many rational,
practical, and sound suggestions as to the remedies for these evils. Rem-
edy must, of course, begin at the root ; and among all these evils the funda-
mental one is the alcoholic habit, because we must have sober people before
we can have people who will think rationally on any subject, or be able to
form and carry out any rational purpose. * * * Now, this traffic exists
and flourishes under laws made, executed, and defended by men, in whom
the alcoholic habit, appetite, and heredity have wrought so stultifying an
effect that it is useless to look to them for any initiative, adequate to the im-
minent and awful necessities of the case.
The drink evil will never be mastered until we have the vote of women to
the rescue — a fact thoroughly appreciated by the liquor-dealers and acted upon
by them, too. For the sake of this one cause alone, the overthrow of the drink
traffic, to say nothing of our duty in every good cause which the vote can pro-
mote— a woman's vote just as much and for precisely the same reasons as a
man's — for this one cause alone it is our duty to so press for our right of suffrage
that we shall get it ; to so rouse the consciences of all other women, and to
so sting and quicken the self-respect of those men whose lives are unques-
tionably influenced and largely guided by us — our fathers, husbands, brothers,
kand sons — that they will feel we neither do nor can respect or love them as
396 International Council of Women.
we wish to do, and as they need and we need that we should, unless they
will really and earnestly do all in their power to help us in removing the
shame, theirs, in the first instance, but ours also, now that we know more than
we did of our disfranchisement. We must work with infinite patience and
determination, and with a persistence as courteous as unflinching, among the
ignorant, timid, disaffected, prejudiced, selfish, and indifferent of our own
sex, until everyone of them is won over to the clear realization of this truth,
that they, that their children, that the whole race — men almost more pro-
foundly than women — need the full enfranchisement of women.
It is our duty to push this matter of our franchise rights and responsibili-
ties so logically, so forcibly, so unceasingly, by every proper available means
and by the intelligent devising of new means, that the whole earnestness and
dignity of womanhood shall be seen and felt with overwhelming, convincing
power, gracious but strong, and not to be gainsaid. * * *
It has been argued that the power of effective combination for a given end
is not possessed by women ; that their personal feelings and emotions always
have got and always will get the better of any effort in this direction. The
Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the United States demolishes this
argument. They have entered into association for securing certain ends,
precisely as men have hitherto done, sinking personal preposessions, preju-
dices, and antipathies. * * * Men have had long practice and have
gradually acquired the lesson that the power of any combined effort — i. e.,
party power — lies in having a fixed principle, a determined purpose to
effectuate it, a clear plan and plain code as to the modus operandi ; and in being
individually pledged to these, irrespective of all other merely personal con-
siderations. In spite- of the lack of those advantages and rights which men
have claimed and used, and while still carrying the burden of all their polit-
ical, social, religious, and personal disabilities, the Woman's Christian Tem-
perance Union is as thoroughly disciplined, coherent, resolute, and practical-
working an organization as exists in the world anywhere to-day. * * *
Being disfranchised, our weapons against the drink evil and against
our legal disabilities, have been hitherto moral suasion and prayer. Both
methods are as old as the race itself. Moral suasion may in the long
run — not always — meet the needs of the moral natures, but national
and social history have shown that it is utterly inadequate to save the
great masses of mankind in their various degrees of moral and immoral ten-
dencies from any universal danger. As to prayer, surely essential prayer
proves itself such, by our doing as fully as we possibly can, our part toward
realizing the object for which we pray. To me it seems often suffered to
degenerate into a time -wasting formality ; I think we pray too much ver-
bally and publicly, and too little in our thoughts and work. The last kind
of praying is, I am convinced, the highest spiritual energizer of human life,
the true source of an inexhaustible capacity to achieve and progress. So we
Political Conditions. 397
must realize our prayers in our votes. No thoughtful woman imagines that
the right of suffrage is other than a tremendous responsibility, involving as
a duty a wide range of laborious and practical studies of life in its individual,
social, religious, political, and international departments, and that the use
of the ballot means anything less than a deliberate share in the labors and
blessings of the progressive, or in the guilty inertia of the retrogressive
movement of the world. In the past, men, for the most part in ignorant
co-operation with little-understood processes of evolution, have kept their
hands on the leverage of human affairs. It has served to check and pervert
their own moral development and to intensify in them, the despotic, in us,
the servile tendencies, common in the germ — as are" all human powers, vir-
tues, and vices — to the original individuality of both sexes. We must shame
out the tyrants in men, and the cowards in ourselves, and insist upon our
equal partnership with men in all the responsibilities and hopes of life.
We want to get rid of the social evil. We want to have it recognized
that male morality is everywhere as essential to human progress as is the
morality of women ; that in fact the one can not exist in any complete sense
without the other. * * * We want better and cleaner lives in our
homes ; we want an honest system of industries and trades, that we may
have a distribution of the whole increment, in juster proportion to the labor,
sacrifices, and risks involved ; we want sanitary reforms, reforms of laws,
civil, international, and local ; we want the prison system changed from crim-
inal-making into regenerating agencies ; we want the so-called philanthropies
and charities, which too often are so clumsily managed that they eat up with
their own red-tape ramifications the sums meant to relieve the necessitous,
to set talent free and touch worthy struggle with opportunities ; we want
these transmuted, so that opportunity and desert come together to the full-
est advantage. We want every good thing about which we theorize, and
for which we strive in groups, and leagues, and under many names. How-
shall we get them ? By getting the ballot and sweeping out the drink — the
most powerful foe to the spirit of civilization ; the worst enemy of religion
and morals; the greatest universal destroyer of physical health, of sanity
of mind, of spiritual life. * * *
Let us, as women, cultivate the habit of thinking, not of what we have
been taught to consider our province or sphere, and of what within such
limits we can or can not do — there is nothing which we can not do, if we
resolve to do it. Let us try to realize that our sphere is determined by no
ipse dixit but that of our own powers. Men, those who have real acumen,
know this very well. But that will do us no good until we know it perfectly
well ourselves, and act upon the knowledge. There is not a horse of sound
lung and limb in all the world, which could not keep from its back or unseat
any man undertaking to subdue it, if it knew its own power ; it does not
know it, and so we can master it. We are told that " knowledge is power."
398 International Council of Women.
Let us put this sentence yet more explicitly, and say rather that knowledge
of power is power.
Miss Anthony. I now keep the promise of last evening, and present to
you Mrs. Clara Neymann, of New York, who will give the closing word of
this session.
SENTIMENTALISTS! IN POLITICS.
Mrs. Neymann. I am glad — nay, I am happy to see this day — to be with
you on this memorable occasion. It is a proud day for the women of Amer-
ica. Those represented here show that woman can excel in devotion to
principles, devotion to intellectual pursuits, devotion to the practical work.
Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Stone have verified by their own lives
and actions the theories they have taught to us ; to know them, to be with
them, is not to have lived in vain. If I am not jubilant in the words I shall
speak to-night it is because I remember the poet's words, " Success makes a
harder struggle necessary."
Our Republic was ushered in by the philosophy of reason. Reason and
justice applied to human affairs, mark the incoming spirit of the nineteenth
century. But this high priest of the mind has of late disappeared from our
political life, and we have in its stead sentimentality and unreason. Our
cause, woman's enfranchisement, though far advanced among the thinking
public, would be triumphant if it was not for this new foe which judges and
assigns things not according to their intrinsic value, but to personal likes
and dislikes. Petty arguments, selfish ambitions, mercenary motives have
taken the place of genuine patriotism, and our just demand to help man
in the arduous business of government is opposed upon sentimental grounds.
Sentimentality is partial, while reason and justice are universal, and apply
to all and each alike. They tell us that politics is unclean J while it is, next
to religion, the most sacred occupation of the civilized man or woman. The
pursuit of politics, rightly conceived and honorably pursued, calls into
activity the highest motives and the most exacting virtues of the human
soul — self-sacrifice and self-devotion. And these virtues woman has all
through the ages practiced in her home-sphere, preparing herself for her
higher mission — a political reformer. Since her home-sphere no longer re-
mains her exclusive occupation, she must now offer these gifts and virtues she
has developed, and which every true man admires, upon the altar of her
country and devote herself to her country's welfare and her country's honor.
Since questions of peace, of arbitration, of reconciliation have superseded
those of war and conquest, it is folly, sheer sentimentality to still hold up
the mediasval ideal of womanhood. Men who hold up this effete ideal are
responsible for woman's frailty and frivolity; they strengthen by their
preference of weak and sentimental girls and women, all the folly and petti-
ness we suffragists would like to eradicate. The coming woman must be
strong and sweet. She must come from her well-ordered home and bring
Political Conditions. 399
grace and dignity and purity into our public and political life. Life means
activity. Let us make our actions great and noble and far-reaching. Give
woman freedom for a wider and broader exercise of her best gifts and virtues,
as the basis of all moral action is freedom, opportunity for the full exercise
of faculties. We have no desire to compete with man, to be his equal in
character or attainment ; we simply ask for free scope and an open field,
leaving the result to the discretion of every individual woman. The triumph
of republican institutions, a genuine democracy, depends upon the freedom
of all, and not upon the monopoly of one class or one sex. Thou, America,
for this scheme's culmination, for this thou hast been created.
Adjourned.
Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, who was to have given the first
address of this session — her subject, " Party, Press and Peo-
ple,"— was called home by a death in her family, and the com-
mittee was compelled to withdraw her name from the final
edition of the programme.
SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 1888.
AFTERNOON SESSION.
RELIGI'OUS SYMPOSIUM.
Miss Anthony. The meeting will be opened by Mrs. J. P. Newman,
of the Metropolitan Church, of this city.
Mrs. Newman. The Psalms of David are beautiful prayers, and so
we will repeat the Nineteenth Psalm, beginning, "The heavens declare
the glory of God." (After reading the Psalm, Mrs. Newman continued.)
On this beautiful, bright Easter Sabbath so many thoughts are coming
into our hearts, and I have been thinking more than anything else how
much I wish my name was Mary, because Mary was the mother of our
Lord ; and when she was told that she was to be the mother of the Lord,
she said : " Be it unto Thine handmaiden according to Thy word." And
when Jesus was asked in other days who was his mother, he said :
"Whosoever doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same
is my mother, and sister, and brother." And to-day we are brought into
that beautiful relationship with Christ.
And, then, He said afterwards, " You have not chosen me, but I have
chosen you and ordained you that you should go forth and bring forth
much fruit, and whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name I will
do it." And there is nothing more appropriate than the great prayer
He taught his disciples when He was on the earth. And, now, while we
repeat that prayer unitedly, may we each of us feel that it enters into
our lives and into all our future. (After the prayer, all joined in singing
the hymn, " Greeting," by Longfellow.)
Miss Anthony. I now have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, of New York.
WOMAN IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
Mrs. Gage. To me, one of the most notable things connected with this
Council has been the almost universal unanimity with which the delegates,
both ministerial and lay, in invocation and speech, have ignored the femi-
nine in the Divinity. So notable has this non-recognition been, that the
morning when I presided over its proceedings I was in some little trouble
to find the woman far enough advanced in theology to recognize the
divine motherhood, but eventually, in Isabella Beecher Hooker, I secured
such person for the invocation with which the programme of the Council
demands all proceedings should be opened. The almost total ignoring
of the Divine Motherhood of God by those who have in any way
Religious Symposium. 401
referred to the Supreme Power, has been to me a subject of profound
surprise and astonishment.
All thoughtful persons, and foremost among them should be the women
here represented, must be aware of the historical fact that the prevailing
religious idea in regard to woman has been the base of all their restric-
tions and degradation. It underlies political, legal, educational, industrial,
and social disabilities of whatever character and nature. The word "God,'*
which simply means good, has everywhere been interpreted by the
Christian Church, especially for the last hundreds of years, as well as by
the later Jewish theocracy, as of but one gender — the masculine ; and it
has been the occasion for the priesthood of both dispensations to ignore
the feminine principle everywhere. Inasmuch as history teaches us that
the rack, the torture, the destruction of human will, the degradation
of woman for the past eighteen hundred years, have been depend-
ent upon masculine interpretation of the Bible, based upon belief in
a purely masculine divinity, this Council has been to me a dangerous
evidence of woman's ignorance upon this most important of questions.
It was the teaching of Aristotle which the church endorsed under penalty
of punishment for heresy that the supreme effort of nature was always for
the masculine, she only producing the feminine when balked of her first
intention.
And even when the great naturalist, Linneaus, of whom it has been said
he made the frozen plains of Lapland to blossom like fairy fields, first
made known his wonderful sexual system of plants, the basis of all modern
investigation in botany, he was shunned as one who had degraded nature
and insulted the Most High.
It is especially surprising that the advocates of social purity fail to
recognize the femininity of the divine — of God ; that they alike fail to see,
to speak of, and to address the Divine Mother, when the fact of this
ignoring by the church and by man has resulted in the creation of two
codes of morals, everywhere recognized in society, the lax for man, the
strict for woman. Had it not been for this theory which has grown out
of the doctrines of the church in regard to the masculinity of God and the
supreme wickedness of woman, the world would not now be filled with
the grossness and moral wrongs which, because of her higher nature, are
everywhere made to fall with supreme force upon woman.
In all ancient nations we find goddesses seated everywhere with gods,
in many instances regarded as superior to them, and of greater influence
in the affairs of the universe. Nor had this idea quite died out at the
advent of Christianity. To the majority of the Christian world the
early history of the church is entirely unknown, but the student can glean
enough to show that the equal feminine nature of the divine was accepted
bv the church.
402 International Council of Women.
The fact that upon his baptism by John, the Holy Spirit descended
upon Jesus in the form of a dove, is sufficient to prove this were other
testimony wanting, the dove among all ancient nations symbolizing the
feminine principle. It is also remarkable that the Hebrew possesses no
masculine gender for dove. Not until after his baptism, when the spirit,
or feminine principle of the divinity, rested upon and united itself with
Him, did Jesus take up his ministry. As spirit in the Hebrew answers to
all genders, and in Greek to the feminine alone, it is easy to see the false
beliefs engendered by church teachings as to the masculinity and father-
hood alone of God. Our records of the first three Christian centuries
prove that even the early and oft-quoted fathers of the church regarded
the third person of the Trinity as feminine.
One of the most revered ancient scriptures of that period, "The
Gospel according to the Hebrews," in use during the second century, and
of great authority, taught this, Origen, in the third century (A. D. 230),
quoting from it. This Gospel was believed to have been compiled from
still older manuscripts; one entitled " The Oracles and Sayings of Christ,"
a second " The Gospel Preaching and Doctrines of Peter." The great
biblical scholar, Tischendorf, to whom the world is indebted for the dis-
covery of the famous " Sinaitic Codex," and almost equally for the
renowned Vatican Codex, hidden so many years in the Vatican palace at
Rome, endorses the authenticity of this Gospel, believing it to have been
in use by Justin, one of the earliest Christian fathers, whose birth is
placed at A. D. 89.
Another canonical book of the New Testament, now lost, was known as
"The Everlasting Gospel," and was also called "The Gospel of the
Holy Ghost." In this Jesus is represented as saying : " My mother, the
Holy Ghost, took me." The Gnostics, that early philosophical division
of the church which claimed possession of the only true Christianity,
denominated this feminine principle, Sophia, i. e., wisdom. With the
Kabalists, the feminine signified those who possessed a knowledge of
secret things, especially of a divine character. The "Divine Spirit"
was conceded to be the feminine Jehovah, or the feminine principle of the
Godhead. This spirit is not alone the comforter ; it is the animating
power — the life. A recent article upon the Esoteric or interior meaning
of the gospels refers to spirit in this wise : " One is she, the spirit of the
Elohim of life."
The primary sense of spirit, as given by Webster, is to drive, to rush.
This recalls the Day of Pentecost, when the Spirit descended as a mighty,
rushing wind, visible as tongues of fire. Fire possesses the same radical
sense as spirit, signifying to rush. Either as spirit or as fire, this prin-
ciple of the divinity denotes activity, animation, vigor, force, and is
equivalent to life itself — the creative principle. In this Council there
Religious Symposium. 403
have been frequent references to the creation. Let me present the sub-
ject on the same Biblical basis, but from a different interpretation.
God, that is Father-Mother, said: " Let us make man in Our image,
after Our likeness." So God, Father-Mother, created man, male and
female created He-She, them, and called their name Adam, a generic
term signifying "red;" or, as has been interpreted, "the one who
blushes." In addition, the woman, possessing the feminine attributes of
the Divinity, received a specific name, significative of spirit, of life : Eve in
our translation, Zoe in the Greek, both signifying life, the one who holds
or gives life, the life-giver, the creative principle, in which respect the
woman possesses superiority over the man.
The Old Testament, falsely translated as it has been, full of mistakes
and interpolations as it is known to be, is pronounced in its recognition
of a feminine principle in the Divinity. The word Jehovah, too holy to
be spoken by the Jew, was formed by the union of Jah-Eve, signifying
both the masculine and the feminine, while El Shaddai, translated "The
Almighty," is used only when some action of the Divine nature express-
ive of the feminine is required. Its external signification is purely
feminine.
During the lapse of ages and growing materiality of the world the
femininity of the Divine was forgotten, its holiness, or wholeness, lost,
and until again recognized humanity mourns. Various bodies, material
and mystical, lament the "lost name," among them, the Masons, the inner
meaning of whose rites, not understood by themselves, is based upon it.
Through ignorance, prejudice, and fraud, the feminine having been lost,
God has been presented to both Jew and Christian as solely masculine.
The wholeness of the Divine name will not be restored until the feminine
is again recognized as a component part of the Divinity.
The Lord's Prayer, " Hallowed be Thy name," is an entreaty for the
restoration of the "wholeness" of this name — for a recognition of the
feminine in this name. It lies within the power of each person uttering
this prayer to answer it himself — herself; and the remaining portions,
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done as in heaven so on earth," de-
pend upon a restoration of the wholeness of the Divine name by a recog-
nition of the feminine in the Divinity.
By no external miracle is the world to be taught truth. The kingdom
of heaven lies within ; each person can hasten its advent for himself, her-
self. There is abundant proof that even under this partial recognition of
the motherhood or femininity of God, women were officially recognized
in the early ministrations of the Christian church. They were ordained
to the ministry, officiated as deacons, administered the rites of baptism
and the Lord's supper, promulgated tenets, interpreted doctrines, and
founded sects to which even their names were given. From Marcellina, in
404 International Council of Women.
the second century (A. D. 160), a body of the church took its name.
Her adherents were called Marcellinions, the same as the followers of
Huss, Luther, Wesley, Calvin, and Swedenborg, at a later period, have
been known as Hussites, Lutherans, Wesleyans, Calvinists and Swedenbor-
gians. Although the writings of Marcellina have shared the fate of many
canonical books, having been lost, her memory has descended to us fra-
grant with the deeds of a good life. As Deborah was the only Jewish ruler
whom the sacred scribes, historians, and prophets passed by unrebuked,
so we find the memory of Marcellina free from calumny and reproach.
Her life and her doctrines were in accord.
Maxamilla, a prophetess, also lived in the second century — the latter
part, about A. D.'igo. Her writings are not extant. The present version
of the New Testament mentions, by name, women who preached, and to
whose services the early church was largely indebted. In the latter half
of the fourth century and first half of the fifth the woman deaconate of
the East had reached a position of great importance.
All the later Greek Fathers — Basil, Gregory of Nyassa, Theodoret, and
others — refer to it, and notices of individual deaconesses become frequent
in church annals. By the sixth century the office of deaconess had become
entirely sacerdotal, forming a link between the secular and spiritual clergy.
As part of this body, they were addressed as ' ' Most Reverend and Ven-
erable." Even as late as the seventh century this office was common
in the Christian church, the Synod of Constantinople, in Tivoli, 691-2,
promulgating a canon fixing the age at which both men and women could
receive ordination for the deaconate. At this date women still adminis-
tered baptism, as we find from a work of John Moschus, entitled " The
Spiritual Meadow," which, appearing at the end of this century, referred
to the office of deaconess in conjunction with the baptism of women.
As the centuries passed on and the idea of a purely masculine God
gained strength, we find woman continuously losing her representative
place in the church. From the fourth century canons were promulgated
by various councils forbidding, first, her ministry and service at the altar;
next, the deaconate and the right of performing baptism; yet, even then,
her services were permitted at the bedside of a dying person in case no
masculine priest was present. But very early a division had occurred
between men and women in the church upon the subject of baptism,
women claiming the right to baptize their own sex. At this ordinance
the candidate was divested of clothing, anointed with oil, and other
ceremonies practiced for driving out demons, with which all the unregen-
erate were supposed to be infested.
Man having separated himself from a belief in the femininity of God,
continually degraded women in the church, as is shown by the action of
these various councils. That of Laodicea (A. D. 365), by its eleventh
Religious Symposium. 405
canon, forbade the further ordination of women to the ministry, and pro-
hibited them from even entering the altar. In the action of these coun-
cils, proof is shown that woman did not willingly relinquish her rights in
the church. The Council of Orleans (A. D. 511), one hundred and forty-
six years later, promulgated a canon excluding women from the deaconate,
but the history of the church proves them to have continued in this office,
especially in the Eastern church, three hundred years longer.
But the earliest European churches made great distinction between the
purity of man and woman, even while women still possessed functional
rights in those bodies. By a decree of the Council of Auxerre (A. D.
578) women, on account of their impurity, were forbidden to receive the
Eucharist into their naked hands. They were also forbidden to sing in
church on account of their inherent wickedness.
In the sixth century (Macon, A. D. 585) a council was held whose chief
subject of discussion was the possession of a soul by woman. While upon
one side was the determination of women to maintain their position in the
church, upon the other side was the whole masculine power of the church
sustained purely by its continuous teaching of the superiority of the mas-
culine, the inferiority and subjection of women. The struggle was long.
Despite the increasing loss of spiritual knowledge and the entrance of
Europe upon that prolonged era of mental and moral darkness, when from
the seventh to the eleventh century individual thought was so far crushed
that not even a heresy arose; despite the action of councils and the con-
certed effort of the church for depriving her of spiritual power — we still
possess historical proof of woman's serving at the altar and administering
the sacrament until the ninth century, when the Council of Paris (A. D.
824) again took the subject into restrictive consideration.
From that moment the darkness of Christendom became profound.
Neither science, art, nor literature flourished; history itself died; and we
know absolutely less of Christian Europe from 800 to 1100, A. D.,
than we do of ancient Egypt 3,000 years ago. When the feminine
was wholly proscribed, the night of moral and spiritual degradation
reached its greatest depth, and that condition ensued which has alike been
the wonder and despair of the modern historian, but whose cause is
easily discernible to him who reads aright. The church, while in word
proclaiming the unity of God, had in reality passed over to idolatry in
a worship of the masculine. In place of truth, falsehood prevailed; in
place of unity, division. Has not the time, therefore, fully come for
women to take council together ? Has not the time come for an inves-
tigation of the principles of religion ? Has not the moment arrived for
woman to see the truths of nature for herself? Has not the time come
for her to interpret the Bible herself? Shall she longer consent to*
remain a subject and isolated portion of humanity ? For many cen-
406 International Council of Women.
turies woman lived under the ban of silence. In the inmost recesses of
her own heart she knew herself to be a component part of humanity —
the chiefest part, inasmuch as through her life is ever preserved. But for
long ages, to speak was death; even thought was controlled, and the
bondage of her will seemed absolute. The world had lost its equilibrium,
and its descent become easy. But balances can not forever descend ;
" There are two poles to the extremes of man's nature."
The night of ignorance, credulity, and despair is nearly at an end; the
dawn is at hand; the feminine will soon be fully restored to its rightful
place in creation and in religion as well as in law, in the divinity as well
as in humanity, we shall find recognition of the sexual duality of all life, of
the motherhood as well as the fatherhood of God.
The world is full of vague unrest; the people, the church, the state all
have premonition of some great crisis at hand; but neither church, state,
nor people see this crisis to be an entire revolution in religious thought
regarding the feminine. The hour of this spiritual change is at hand.
One of the most notable signs of this crisis is the recent formation by
women of a society for the moral reformation of man — the White Cross.
This is the more notable as the past action of the church has created two
codes of morals ; the strict for woman, the lax for man. In the White
Cross for men, and its kindred Silver Cross for boys and youth under
sixteen, the same moral responsibility, the same purity of conduct is
demanded of men that is required of women.
A second and more recent sign of the world's spirit to-day lies in the
call for an International Scientific Congress of Catholics, soon to convene
in Paris, whose wide list of subjects of such nature as a century or two
since would have condemned a man to the stake for heresy, has received
the sanction of Pope Leo XIII. In this programme, drawn up by the
leading French scholars, are such questions as "the authenticity of the
Pentateuch and the prophecies," "the bases of morality and right" — to
which end all of Herbert Spencer's studies have tended — " the origin of
life," and "a textual criticism of the New Testament."
When the conservative Mother Church endorses a council of her chil-
dren, among whose objects are criticisms of the New Testament, and
inquires into the authenticity of the Pentateuch and prophecies of the Old
Testament, the world is in the midst of a tremendous religious revolution.
And when in addition to this Catholic action we find Protestant theolo-
gians of prominence, with Bishop Carlisle at their head, engaged in a
discussion as to the original form of the Ten Commandments, or ' ' Ten
Words," and eliminating from the tenth as an interpolation all that por-
tion in regard to a man's wife, his ox, his cattle, and all things that are
his, leaving it simply "Thou shalt not covet," surely the spiritual en-
franchisement of the world is at hand.
Religious Symposium. 407
In view of all the past and present continuous revisions of the Bible and
its many thousand acknowledged mistakes and interpolations, whereby not
only the Ten Commandments are found wrong, and also the most cher-
ished portions of the New Testament, as the Sermon on the Mount and
the Lord's Prayer, are proven to have been added to, it is folly to expect
from women an undoubted belief in man's theological statements and
biblical interpretations.
Man has lost his power over woman. Mr. Moody, the evangelist, de-
clared he found men a hundred-fold more receptive of his teachings than
women. For fifteen years he had preached a sermon in the afternoon to
women, and the same sermon as far as possible to men in the evening, and
in nine cases out of ten with inconceivably greater results.
The right of private judgment possessed by women in the early Chris-
tian church, as we have noted, although afterwards denied both to women
and to common men, was in reality the great lesson of the Reformation,
although not yet fully conceded to the women of to-day. The world
is alive with religious questions. The purity of the church is ques-
tioned. A tree is declared known by its fruits, says the London Table,
and asks what is the actual and practical good of the professed Christianity
of England at this present time, with the land absolutely seething with
want, misery, ignorance, and vice in their most degrading and debasing
forms. Even in this country conservative men are demanding a new class
of clergy more in accord with science and the spirit of the hour. Charles
Francis Adams, in an address before the Social Union of Amherst College
a few years since, bewailed the unprogressiveness of theology, declaring
the need of a fresh class of clergy for the benefit of man's education.
If such a fresh class of clergy is needed by men, how much more by women,
against whose moral and material rights the interpretations of the Bible
and the whole force of the church have been directed for nearly 2,000 years.
The religious teachers of the present day need to be brave and liberal
persons, possessing knowledge of science, history, and the laws of evolu-
tion. They need to be persons — they need to be women — who shall dare
break away from all the false traditions of the middle ages, fearless in
preaching the truth as to the absolute and •permanent equality of the
feminine with the masculine, not alone in all material, but in all spiritual
things.
Miss Anthony. I now have the pleasure of introducing to you the
Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, who, as I have said to you before, was the
first woman ever regularly ordained as a minister in this country.
WHAT RELIGIOUS TRUTHS CAN BE ESTABLISHED BY
SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY?
Mrs. Brown Blackwell. In presenting a theme like this upon an
occasion like the present, a few explanatory words are needed to indicate
the fitness of the subject for the occasion.
408 International Council of Women.
Nearer fifty than forty years ago a young country girl began to realize
that many active workers in various reforms, and men occupied in differ-
ent lines of investigation, were tending away from the religious orthodoxy
of the day, and that the positions taken on both sides were often incon-
sequent. At that time the girl was sincerely though liberally orthodox;
but she had an intuitive disbelief in the monstrous doctrine that to the
male sex only is delegated the duty of investigating truth, and judging
between the true and the false, with the corresponding duty of instructing
others. She recognized an impulse towards exactly that vocation for
herself; and she began diligently to qualify herself, as well as she could
by study and research, to stand on an intellectual level with the best edu-
cated minds.
She had one solid basis for a creed. With not a shadow of a doubt
that religious truth had been specially revealed, she recognized the actual
Universe to be an exposition of truth which no one, whatever his opin-
ions otherwise, could have any right to discredit. She distinctly made it
the final test of opinions. After a full course of theological study she
began to investigate the established principles and facts in many depart-
ments of science, supplemented, where direct verification fails, by logic
and philosophy. From then till now she has been trying to answer the
question, " What religious truths can be demonstrated without help from
a special revelation ? " This paper is a very brief statement of conclusions.
Can Nature reveal an Intelligence who deserves to be named Good or
God ? Is He the Creator ? — that is, Did he condition and establish related
Nature with her modes and processes ?
We have reason and feeling. Animals, even plants, are clearly of our
kin. The frost-work on our windows and all physical products seem
kindred also. They follow methods so like intelligence no one can wonder
that primitive men thought there must be some directive wisdom behind.
Science shows us that everything follows its own innate laws and tenden-
cies; that Nature of herself can go on progressively and work out her
own destiny. But science has not yet decided whether these innate laws
and tendencies have arisen spontaneously, or whether they began, with
time itself, as dependent parts of one rational plan, devised and inaugurated
by Original Intelligence.
Motion is one of nature's measured quantities, and mass — the exten-
sions or tensions of matter — the other. These tensions are often called
matter, and the motion, force. We distinguish them as "bound" mo-
tions and " free " motions; both working energies, with action and reac-
tion between them, equal and opposed. We hold that all changes of
every kind are, in their last analysis, atomic changes; that they are inter-
nal rhythms, motion on their physical side, and emotion, conscious or
sub-conscious, on their mental side.
Religious Symposium. 409
Whenever by an adapted combination of rhythms any atom can take
the initiative in promoting, through its sentient phases, motions complex,
subtle, rapid and delicate enough to lift it into the domain of higher feel-
ing, it may become self-conscious! As material, it is a rhythmic atom,
co-operating with countless hosts of other atoms in one larger combined
system. But it has now become conscious of its own heritage.
If the Eternal Self-existence is only unconscious power, and law and
process only mechanical results, then we can expect to find in nature no
sufficient evidence of a rational adjustment of change to change in the
grand harmony of dependent organic motions and emotions. We can
expect to find no convincing proof that emotion or consciousness — per-
ception, feeling, thought, purpose, in all their vivid, varied experiences —
is but the other side, the higher phase of one created rhythmic progress !
We can not hope to prove that the living changes in a distinct personal
consciousness — conditioned inseparably with changes in space — are so
attuned to the more facile types of vibration that when it throbs respon-
sive to these from its chief seat among the grand organic harmonies, it
may become as one of the gods in its own rational enjoyment.
But if Intelligent Power has related all rhythmic changes in such ways
that certain ultimate persistent rhythmic systems, impelled, guided, and
aided by their relations, can rise into distinct, actual self- consciousness,
we ought to be able to discover and verify that fact. If nature, as a
whole, has been so constituted that, soon or late, it will surely be evolved
into a universe, not like this of to-day, admirable and grand as this
already is, but into a universe such as this will be hereafter, a universe
such as we ourselves can already forecast in ideal, then we ought to real-
ize that great sustaining truth.
The vital intelligence and benevolence of the vast related scheme should
be found ingrained in the deepest constitution of conditioned being and
in every detail of its related activities. By diligent searching we ought
to be able to find satisfactory evidence of a consistently rational plan and
of a wholly beneficent method of achieving it. We ought to be able, soon
or late, to demonstrate these reassuring truths to the satisfaction of all
minds competent to weigh the evidence upon both sides.
But so long as we continue to interpret Nature's processes in coarse
aggregates, then — very much as by the aid of our senses alone we see only
those things which are coarse-grained enough to become sensibly visible,
and hear only those sounds which vibrate slowly enough to quicken our
physical organs of hearing — we shall be able to see not very far beyond
the superficial appearances.
No great advance in knowledge was ever gained except by looking
with other eyes than those of sense. No one has literally seen the law
of gravitation or the revolution of the earth upon its axis and about the
27
410 International Council of Women.
sun. Science can verify the truths which at first were insight, inference
or hypothesis; but weights and measures can not fathom the profound
meaning of rational principles. One may fail by attempting too much.
But Browning says, "What I aspired to be, comforts me."
Existence is essentially force or power. It is power to exist and to act.
When related being is called matter, as it is by materialists, then matter
is interpreted as having the efficient quality of force. When called force,
by idealists, then matter is placed among its modes. Thus philosophy
affirms either that the self-existent is power, or that it has power — a dis-
tinction more verbal than actual.
The merest baby shows that he instinctively recognizes power to be the
common element in every related change. To cry and laugh is energy
expressed in crying and laughing. Every feeling, every thought and act,
every object, every motion, is some mode in which, power is manifested.
We instinctively discriminate the power in each change from the method
through which the changes are produced.
Then, if Uncrea.^d Being is essential Power, created things may be the
methods in which this abiding Power has chosen to relate, and through
these relations to limit and direct some of its own activity. The absolute
Total can add nothing to itself; it is the all; but if it be Intelligent Power,
it could voluntarily forego the unlimited use of any part of its own activity.
Creation might be, not something added to the absolute, but something
virtually subtracted from its exercise ; disused in an unlimited sense, and
so related that it can be utilized only under established conditions. If
essential power were so appropriated, it would, to that extent, be not ac-
tually, but practically, given away; given to the conditioned beings who
could use it only under the imposed regulations; its uses would be their
uses.
We continually limit our own activities ; but if we are wise, we do it only
for wise reasons. If we are benevolent, we voluntarily give of our energies
to benefit others. If there be a Supreme Intelligence, we can hardly assume
that, in establishing a persistent conditioned universe by limiting the exer-
cise of His supreme power, He has been less wise or less benevolent than
we ourselves often are. If creation is the result of a rational choice, of a
realized intelligent plan, we should be compelled to believe in the benev-
olence of the established scheme, even before it was positively demon-
strated.
But the whole remains simply a question of fact: Can the actual uni-
verse prove or disprove the hypothesis that creation is a free gift to cer-
tain conditioned beings, to little living systems of rhythmic activities,
conditioned in joint dependence and several-sided in manifestations ?
By using the energies thus conferred upon them, such conditioned
beings, the rhythmic atoms of our theory, would be allied both to the
Religious Sympos ium . 41 1
matter side and to the mind side of the existing universe. Their endless
changes would be both simultaneous and successive alike as motions and
as emotions. This only means that the internal atomic relations necessi-
tate equal action and reaction at once in space, in time, and in living sen-
tience. With each change of motion would arise a related feeling more
or less vivid. Would not the rise of consciousness in such a being be
more kindred with its origin than the unsentient or motion side of its
changes? The special methods in which it can act must begin with its
relative constitution. It must start with a first-related motion and a first-
related emotion. It must gain distinct self-consciousness, if at all, as it
gains personal knowledge and all other experiences, progressively and
increasingly. The rhythmic atom is a method , an endless process. In
consciousness, it must be an endless progress, if it continue to exist at
all as a distinct system of related changes.
No one can affirm in advance that relative existence may not be consti-
tuted in accordance with a benign scheme similar to the one we have out-
lined. If it be, immortality, personal and conscious, is as firmly assured
to each of us as is the indestructibility of universal nature. Our person-
ality is atomic, not organic. Of course one can only suggest the line
of evidence in confirmation of the theory, in a brief paper like this. Its
first, most verifiable, and most crucial tests must come from the facts, prin-
ciples, and laws of the physical world. If it can pass that ordeal, psychical
explanations and the relations of mind to matter will add confirmation
too strong to admit of further question. Then can we intelligently state
the nature of the rhythmic atom on its matter side? If we can, will it
explain compound physical processes satisfactorily?
Science is steadily reaching the conclusion that the atom of matter is
a persistent unit, with tensions and motions ; but it has no distinct theory
of the exact relations between mass and motion . It holds that emotions
arise with organic, possibly in some elementary degree with inorganic,
physical changes ; yet, illogically, the so-called materialists argue that
sentience arises not only with, but from, compound substances as their
resultant properties. But every system, large or small, must change
exclusively within itself, whether its changes be motions, emotions, or
both, though its changes must be modified by its co-operations. If there
be persistent least units of changes at' ail, then all changes must be solely,
inherently, atomic.
Atomic lines of tension, extending indefinitely outward, or grouped
around the atomic center, seeming to have position only, equally stand
for mass, and are composed of bound or equilibriated motions. Free
motions, run along these tensions, or go elsewhere; but always leaving
reversed motion or increased tensions as an equivalent. No atom can
part with any portion of its proper energy, acting either as tensions or as
free motions. Nature, as a total, can neither increase her tensions nor
412 International Council of Women.
her free motions, but in any part there may be more bound and less free
motions, or the reverse. The combination of atoms generally results in
increase of tensions and liberation of motion, with commensurate modifica-
tions of the atomic rhythms. This means related modification of all pro-
cesses, motional or emotional ; but not the transfer of atomic changes
from the atom elsewhere.
Will you for a few minutes try to imagine a pulsating star of energies,
with every ray alternately expanding and contracting from a common
center. Think of each ray as stretching outward and back again through
a given space in a given time. Imagine that while half of the rays are
expanding the other half are contracting. Each pair of these opposed
vibrating rays becomes a pole or axis of the atom ; but as it has many
axes balancing it in all directions, though it is vibrating in every part, it
is centrally at rest, and can only be moved from its position by some out-
side power. Now, what can this rhythmic complex unity of motions be
supposed to make plainer and more credible in physical processes? Re-
member that it is more indivisible than the inside from the outside of a
sea shell, or the strings from the ^olian harp. It is an equilibrium of
motions, so delicately balanced that to disturb the adjusted action and
reaction at any point would throw the whole into a confusion, which
would become annihilation to the changing dependent system.
Let us suppose a myriad of such simple yet complex atoms to be put
into a chemist's retort. Their extending poles meet, clash, or strike, end
to end. They must rebound ; that is, repel each other. The amount of
repulsion must depend upon the force of each collision, that upon the ex-
tent of each polar expansion before the contact, that upon the greater or
less crowding of like particles. Could not our expanding and contracting
poles, with their exact normal balance of energies, thus mutually inter-
fering for want of room, explain the facts of gaseous distribution, the laws
of pressure, and all the various phenomena of gases, without the need of
gratuitously endowing small masses with any power of self-translation, of
attraction, or of repulsion, such as larger masses do not possess? The
tensions of any one gas being equilibriated, "saturated," other gases
could enter as into a vacuum, if their poles vibrate upon other lines.
Our rhythmic atoms have varieties of type, and even, possible unlike
modifications in response to outside energies, in the same type. If the
extending poles of different gases within a limited space be thought of as
stretching past each other from opposite directions along closely parallel
lines, any foreign motion evidently might shake them together. Both
lines of tension are groups of bound motions, which would easily become
entwined. Each pole, on its return vibration towards its own atomic
center, must pull against its neighbor; a tense compound line will result,
and draw the two combining atoms into one larger equilibrium — the
molecule.
Religious Symposium. 413
This necessitates readjusted rhythms, which become new properties to
our answering sensations. This process is called chemical combination.
Chemical action varies indefinitely in details ; but in chemical union
there is increase of tensions, with liberation and distribution of heat mo-
tion, while in chemical disunion heat is absorbed and the tensions are
decreased — each pole being freed from the pull of its neighbor. Adjusted
polar vibrations would explain the facts of varying affinities and atom-
icities, without calling in the aid of occult predilections of one sub-
stance for another. There is a definite combination of two or more
poles, each pole moving from its own atomic center both before and after
it has combined with its neighbor. Each modifies the motions of the
other; so that there is more bound and less free motion between them
after the union ; but each atom still energizes for itself, and it has neither
more nor less energy than before.
Chemical action has been regarded as a special kind of influence, but
our theory reduces it to plain mechanical combination. The motions are
atomic, and generally vibrations rather than translations, but they obey
mechanical laws. They are only new associations among inconceivably
delicate harmonies of motion. If the uniting tensions can so far push and
pull together in the same directions that no apparent change of physical
properties results — that is, if the sum of the combined tensions and mo-
tions remains unchanged, as when like particles combine to form a solid,
we call that class of unions cohesions or adhesions. The difference is
not in the kind of energies in action ; it all depends on whether they pull
together or pull against each other.
Now, let us recall that, while one-half of the atomic poles extend, the
others contract. Various associated tensions may thus arise from the
union of poles within the same atom. Gases have indefinitely-extending
poles; but pressure or the removal of heat, by crowding together outgoing
and incoming poles till they combine with opposed tensions, must produce
immense contraction. This accounts for the change from gases to fluids.
Friction and similar foreign motion, by combining poles of the same or
of different molecules in such ways as to force co-operation in one direc-
tion, with more or less of stress and constraint, must compel a commen-
surate reaction somewhere. This explains static electricity, electric dis-
charge, disruptive action, and stress in the dialectric. The magnet has a
permanent separation of the outgoing from the incoming poles, with so
much bending of their lines of vibration that they co-operate in a con-
tinuous circuit. Metals become good conductors by a permanent partial
polarization. Electrical currents and their interfering fields of force have
similar explanations.
Light, heat, sound, and all motions radiated or conducted along uncom-
bined atomic poles move in straight lines. They also can be variously
414 International Council of Women.
polarized, but only by sending them against or through substances
which are themselves under a constraint from tensions in definite directions.
All radiated motions, by quickening the rates, extend the amplitudes of
polar vibrations without changing the time of beats. They all tend to
decrease tensions and increase polar elongations. Compensating lines of
energy must steadily tend to increase tensions and decrease polar elonga-
tions. Equal action and reaction compel this; but the principle explains
gravitation with its strength of energy wherever tensions are aggregated
and its inverse energy as the distance increases.
Rotary motion has no place in simple atomic rhythms, yet it is easily
taken on either by atoms or compounds. The universe is a vast equi-
libration of ceaseless changes, every one of which necessitates some unlike
compensating change. The ether of space transmits all lines of energy.
It is a vast field, where uncombined vibrating poles produce tensions not
unlike those of a saturated gas in a confined space; but a special ether is
not needed to explain the terrestrial operations of light, heat, or electricity;
and by abolishing it here as an hypothesis, we abolished the almost
insuperable difficulties of explaining its co-operations with ordinary
matter.
Every change arises under the irreversible law of necessity, but with
wide opportunities of varied action within definite limits. No fact is more
obvious to science, or is found to reach more widely into all processes,
than that of an appreciable variability under like conditions.
Fluent energies are inherently opposed to rigidity in action or reaction.
They have special adaptations for compensating variations. Thus only
could they accept emergencies coming in any mode from any direction,
by radiations as various as the incident forces. This allows sufficient lati-
tude to intelligent volition whenever a conscious atom recognizes its own
possibilities. Besides providing for a steady general evolution, it confers
dignity and value upon individual life and makes character in large part a
personal acquirement. It sets a moral value upon conduct as good or
bad, and it supplies motives, enforcing them by inherent penalties and
rewards.
Not till the conscious mind can measurably control an organism adapted
to its needs does it become distinctly self-conscious. A type of feeble
but ever-recurring sentience, without memory, seems to exist and to have
its own values. Nascent feeling certainly reaches far down in the scale
of development. We ourselves have a sub-consciousness of many kinds
and degrees, sleeping and waking. In sleep, the organism impels the
mind, often driving it into random activities. It does this in waking
hours if we are off guard. But it is the privilege of the conscious side of
every individuality physically well provided and aided, to take the helm
and steer, at least in mild seas and when there are no tempests of passion
Religious Symposium. 415
and temptation. Even with a feeble hold upon the co-working forces,
one can acquire a God-like self-control.
The mind side of the rhythmic atom seems to me less difficult to com-
prehend than the matter side. A motion is a change from there to here
in space, but it is also change from then to now in time; then why not the
related side of change from that feeling to this feeling ? The feeling
arises in sentience and in time. Time, the common function, relates the
motions to their associated emotions. The two are distinct in kind, but
never separate in time; and not two changes, but the two jointly-dependent
aspects of one change. We know the space and time sides of every
motion to be distinct, but never separate. We know the conscious and
time sides of every feeling to be distinct, but never separate. But it is
equally certain that, as motion and emotion — two sides of the same change
in a common time — they are distinct, but never separate.
What has so long blinded us to this obvious dependence ? Surely
nothing except tradition and inherited primitive belief. Inter-related,
arising as one progression, they are the indivisible sides of one several-
sided conditioned activity. Together they are an endless, serial progress
of changes in every atomic history. Co-operation varies the modes of
the atomic process ; it changes the internal adjustments ; but there is in
each atom a rhythmic unity of changes absolutely personal to itself.
A long line of physical ancestry, increasingly organized, prepares a
human brain for its proper sovereign. Human consciousness does not
come single and alone into conscious life. Analogy offers convincing
evidence that it will not plunge alone and orphaned into the life to come.
All life is immortal life ; conditioned life is progressive personal experi-
ence. Like Archbishop Paley's watch, our rhythmic atom of dependent
relations compels belief that Intelligence devised and established its won-
derful co-operations. It demonstrates the need of a rational Creator. It
makes Him surety for our personal immortality, with enough freedom of
action to offer a solid basis for the growth of mental and moral character.
It ensures an ever-enlarging, conscious experience. It guarantees the
possibility of an ever-increasing happiness with ever-enlarging social
sympathies. It confirms the lesson of fraternity, which makes men
brothers and helpers of each other. It proves even the humbler four-
footed and no-footed folk to be our near kindred. But it makes us akin
also to Omnipotent Power, which is in all conditioned being. Can we
ask for more ?
Miss Anthony. The next speaker on the programme is Mrs. Caroline
H. Dall ; but as she is not present I will introduce Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton
Harbert, of Illinois.
" god is LOVE."
Mrs. Harbert. Is it not a hopeful fact, that the foundation principles of
416 International Council of Women.
religion are so divinely simple, that although one is limited to ten minutes,
the attempt at statement is made ?
We are told that notwithstanding the fears and strenuous opposition of
his men, one of our generals, who had real faith in God, in the power of
truth, the omnipotence of love, went unarmed into the presence of an Indian
chief, who had always decreed death for any " pale face" who should dare
approach him. Please study the scene. The powerful, so-called bar-
barous chief, the unarmed apostle of "peace on earth, good will to men."
"You have a Father in heaven," was the tender assurance of the " pale face."
A gruff assent from the chief. "I have a Father in heaven." Again the
gruff response. " Listen. If you have a Father in heaven, and I have a
Father in heaven, and there is but one Father, one ' Great Spirit,' then vou
and I are brothers." The soul of the Indian was reached by those three
sentences of love. Tears streamed down his face as, clasping the extended
hand of the general, he recognized, by gleams of that " inner light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world," the fatherhood of God,
the brotherhood of man, and the love to God and humanity that " make
the whole world kin."
Love is the creative principle, the basis of everything permanent and
real in character, thought, and morals; not what we think about God,
Christ, and humanity, but the degree of our love and faith, is the vital fact.
But how do we know, in this world of so many apparent contradictions,
that we do " live and move and have our being " in a Creator who is infinite
in goodness, omnipotent in love? (i.) By the interior perception, by the
spiritual in all ages, races, stations, and conditions. Can you, dear friends,
wander alone into the mysterious presence of a starry night, and there say
truly that you believe the miracle enfolding you, the result of chance? (2.)
We believe the Creator is good, because of the universal love of life, his
gift — the dread of death, of annihilation, and the desire for immortality.
This could not be true unless, despite the shadow of error — which is but our
failure to appropriate the good — life is a good gift. We are souls, not bodies.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within." Evil is but our failure to appropri-
ate the good. In the emancipation of the spirit from materialistic fears, lies
the freedom which the world has struggled to obtain.
As in the Indian chief, as it was with the thief upon the cross, so in every
child of God, created in the image of the good, is the immortal soul — the
spark of life. True, because it is soul ; immortal, because it is true. There
is nothing disintegrating in truth, hence no soul can ever die. The mortal,
error and falsehood disintegrated, is lost away from the soul — in fact, being
false, a negation, never had any real existence. There is no death ; what
we call death is a glorious birth, as witness even the statements of thousands
made, just as the spirit puts aside the earthly mask. But what of the strug-
gle, you ask. The moment we begin to see clearly that life is but a rapid
Religious Symposium. 417
journey toward an eternity of joy, that friendship, love, and spiritual
development, are the eternal verities, the entire aspect of the struggle
changes.
A scientist received from a friend a rare specimen of the emperor moth.
Impatiently he watched and waited for the day when the worm should
emerge from the chrysalis. At last the struggle commenced. Slowly the
worm began to emerge through a small aperture. The scientist, impatient
at the delay, took a sharp knife and cut the film skin and the worm crawled
out. Then he discovered his mistake. Only by passing through the small
aperture could the substance of the body of the worm be forced into the
wings of the insect. Thus in our effort to appropriate the good do we
develop the wings of love by which we can soar away to the realms of the
loving. "Still the great mystery remains," some one may be thinking —
the mystery of our creation. Do we not find it in this thought? The
maternal and paternal instinct are of divinest origin. The father and
mother are spirits lonely, with no children to love and care for. Hence
we are the offspring of Omnipotent Love, and do we not begin to see that
an Omnipotent Spirit of Love, knowing life to be a divine gift, could no
more desist from creating than refrain from loving? Oh, beloved, the
simple statement, " God is love," is the spiritual key which unlocks every
mystery. Let us, in the closing hours of these inspiring days, voice again
to the world the angelic benediction, " Peace on earth, good will to men."
We accept as a foundation principle, that we become in character like
the God we worship. If we worship a God whom we believe is partial
toward his children, then will we and the laws reflecting our thought, be
partial, discriminating, hence unjust and oppressive. Therefore, the speed-
iest way to bring justice, righteousness, peace, and liberty to the world, is-
to lead the nations to the worship of a " God of Love."
Fettered by materialistic thoughts, many are blinded to the spiritual veri-
ties being revealed. As a most suggestive thought in this direction, I quote
the following remarkable sonnet from Blanco White :
Mysterious night ! When our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name.
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue ?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of Heaven came,
And lo ! Creation widened in man's view !
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun ? or who could find
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ?
Why do we then shun death with anxious strife ?
If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life ?
Let us also reflect upon this wonderful prophecy, made by one of our
beloved pioneers, Sojourner Truth — thoughts revealed to her inner conscious-
418 International Council of Women.
ness after she was one hundred years old, she being unable to read or write :
" We talk of a beginning, but there is no beginning but the beginning of a
wrong. All else is from God, and is from everlasting to everlasting. All
that has a beginning will have an ending. God is without end, and all that
is good is without end. God is a great ocean of love, and we live and move
in him as the fishes in the sea, filled with his love and spirit, and his throne
is in the hearts of his people."
Some may claim that this philosophy conflicts with the letter of some
parts of the Bible. Let us not forget the statement that the letter killeth,
but the spirit maketh alive. We were endowed with reason before we were
enriched by Bibles, else we could not distinguish between the false and the
true. When the young man came to Jesus with the most vitally important
question, " Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life ? " what was
the answer ? Listen and tell me if I have not the highest authority recog-
nized by the Christian Church when I say that all true religion rests upon the
statement, " God is love." Listen to the answer of the Christ. " Why
callest thou me good? There is but One good, that is God." And, again,
■"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as
thyself; on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
" God is love," and love is the executive force of the universe. Love is God.
Miss Anthony. As Mrs. Livermore is engaged in preaching twice to-day,
she has excused herself from coming here this afternoon. I must say that one
of the most encouraging signs of the times is the eagerness with which the min-
isters of Washington have seized upon our women to preach for them morn-
ing, afternoon, and evening. It wasn't so in the olden days !
After the singing of James Montgomery's beautiful defini-
tion of " Prayer," Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker addressed
the Council.
Mrs. Hooker. On this Easter Day the thought that I would like to fix
upon all our minds is that the great work of the Prince of Peace, whose
resurrection morning we celebrate, was to bring immortality to life. * * *
I am, friends, (I believe in telling the truth about one's self and not hiding it),
a Christian Spiritualist. I am also a scientific spiritualist, and supported
by Alfred Russell Wallace, whom I put at the head of English-speaking
scientists, I make the assertion that the doctrine of immortality is
absolutely proved by science and by precisely the same methods as are used
to prove any other scientific truth. So to-day we claim that under the name
of Occultism, Theosophy, Christian Science, Mind Cure, and metaphysics,
the philosophy of Spiritualism is being illustrated and the great doctrine of
immortality brought to light.
Being asked what effect this has had on my own religious belief, I have
formulated a little confession of faith for myself, and if you will listen to
this, it is all I have to say :
Religions Symposium. 419
First. I believe in one first great cause of all things, whether of mind or
matter, soul or body — the Creator in whom we live and move and have our
being as incarnated souls, and whom the nations and peoples of the earth
have worshiped as the great " Sky Father " since time began.
Second. I believe that the whole creation of mind and matter "groaneth
and travaileth in pain together until now," and always has groaned in these
travail-pains, which were and are the birth-pains into a more glorious life,
even the new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, and
that according to the deeds done in this body, will these pains be lengthened
or shortened in the life to come. " If thy right hand offend thee cut it off;"
it is better for thee to enter into spirit life maimed than, having two hands,
to go into hell (hades, or the land of spirits), fire that never shall be
■quenched, "where their worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched;"
which means that when the spirit molecules have set toward selfishness, all
the days of our incarnation, they will keep to their drift eternally, when dis-
robed of the flesh, except the tide be turned toward holiness by some power
greater than ourselves. In the God of the Hebrew and the Christian, the
Buddhist and the Mahometan, alike, we may recognize the all-wise, tender,
brooding Mother Spirit of the Universe, under whose providential discipline,
•called evolution by the scientist, and fore-ordination and decrees by the
theologian, all souls shall at last reach their culmination and become crea-
tors in their turn. For by the depths of the love we bear our own children,
by our capacity for self-sacrifice, not only for those we love, but for those
who are not our own, but only of our race or country, or even of the family
of man, we may take hold of our ultimate destiny, and know for a certainty
what we shall be when the ages of the future shall have wrought upon us as
the ages of the past have done. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God,
and it doth not yet appear what we shall be."
Third. I believe that matter, not less than spirit, is permeated by the
Divine presence, which, working in all things according to the law of its
being, whether material or spiritual, is bringing to pass the wonders of cre-
ation which we behold, and of whose infinity in moments of inspired vision
we catch a glimpse. In all this the Eternal One would not be alone, and
could not, by the very nature of benevolent being. Hence we, his offspring,
are called, each in our way, according to our ability, to join in this glorious
work of creating a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteous-
ness. And by so much as we join hands and hearts with the disembodied
souls who have fought the good fight and finished their course here below,
and held communion with them on these great themes, we shall be mutually
strengthened and encouraged in the redemptive work to which we are all
consecrated, whether we know it or not, by the great, Divine Over-Soul
whom we reverently call God. And in the end we, too, shall become medi-
ators, every one, between God and man, between mind and matter, between
420 International Council of Women,
spirit and body, like unto Jesus of Nazereth, the great teacher, prophet, and
prince of the later centuries.
Miss Anthony. Mrs. Howe is on the programme to speak to us this after-
noon, but I do not see her here. I now present to you Elizabeth G.
Stuart, of Massachusetts.
THE POWER OF THOUGHT.
Mrs. Stuart. I come before you as a member of the organization
known as Humanity : passport to that organization, Spirit of Truth ; basis of
work, Common Sense ; theory, Evolution. What is truth? Pythagoras said,
" Truth is so great a perfection that if God were to render himself visible to
man, he would choose Light for his body and Truth for his soul !" Truth
is one, with infinite expressions; expression implies limitation, while truth
is unlimited. Truth rests upon the law of identity, established through the
law of polar or real opposites and its twin sister, the law of contradictories,
revealed to man by the science of numbers. It is to that science man must
look for a solution of the problems of life in their varied relations.
No science of ethics, which exempts the physical, can be true, since it
makes man dependent upon the conditions of the body. No system of
physics can be true which strikes from its premises the spiritual law, since it
degrades morals to a dependence upon the physical. Man as a unit is gov-
erned by one law through his entire being, spiritually, intellectually, and
physically, ever in the one order from the higher to the next lower.
The imaging faculty rs the highest known to man ; through it he ex-
presses the ideal, and it is the means by which he expresses to the senses
whatever intellect accepts, thus forming the relation between mind and body.
Through that open door fear enters and stamps upon the body distorted,
untrue mental images, which physicians name, then proceed to try to erase
from the body by physical means.
It is a self-evident absurdity that a picture in mind can be removed by
rubbing the body. Fear in the mind, frorn any cause, increases the heat of
the body ; and, as the thermometer rises higher and higher, we see the differ-
ent degrees known as first inflammation, then congestion, ulceration, and
so on.
"As a man thinketh, that he becometh." As is the mind, so is the
thought ; as is the thought, so is the image expressed in form externally.
Let him keep his picture-gallery free from impurity, who would have pure
blood. Whatever he does not desire to appear in the external, must be watch-
fully kept out of the mind ; once there, its picture hangs upon the inner
walls, ready for the favorable moment to appear. The imaging faculty is
both cause and cure for all bodily discord.
Miss Anthony. Let me now introduce to you Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney, of
Boston.
Mrs. Cheney. I never feel quite free to refuse to bear witness to the faith
Religious Symposium. 421
that is in me whenever I am called upon, because it has been the experience
of my life, that words that have been droppsd without any idea of their
weight and importance, have sometimes fructified in human hearts and borne
good fruit. So that, happily, however weak the voice, we may reach some
heart and do it good. And on this beautiful Easter Day we should all like
to do that if we could.
As I sat listening to the creed of our friend, Mrs. Hooker, I thought of
the two great principles of religion which are so often expressed by my
great teacher, Theodore Parker, the " fatherhood of God and the brother-
hood of man," and it seemed to me that those two sentences would com-
prise, as well as anything I could say, the thought that I would like to leave
in our hearts this afternoon. With him the fatherhood of God always meant
the motherhood, too. It was his almost universal custom to begin those
deep and tender prayers, which dwelt in the memory of his hearers as a
blessing all through the week, " God, our Father and Mother both." And
so, when he said the brotherhood of man, he meant always as we mean when
we say it — the brothers and sisters both. This has seemed to me a most
religious meeting all through the week. For though we have said very little
about these great religious truths in their abstract expression, the whole drift
and tone of the speeches have been in the recognition of those two great
truths. I think when we have asked for equal rights and equal opportunities
for women, it has been because we have always remembered that woman was
the child of God just as much as man, feeling that the poorest and most
wronged member of this human race, was our brother and our sister ; and so
we can carry these great truths always in our hearts and our lives, and they
are truths that we all can unite on. Perhaps I love the subtleties of meta-
physics and theology just as well as any one. I can enjoy them intellectually,
but I think we can all differ in those. We can all come back and unite in
these great truths of religion which lie at the base of all morality; and if
we could only carry them out into works we should find, if we added to them
the wisdom of experience and the wisdom of thought, that to-day they
struck the key-note ; that they resolved all our difficulties and all our differ-
ences into harmony.
I heard yesterday that some one sent a message of regret that this meet-
ing took place in Holy Week; but it has been a holy week to those who are
not wont to think that religion depends on times and seasons, but on conse-
cration to right purposes and to great philanthropic and human enterprises;
and I trust it will live long in our memories, and that we shall date back
many a gain for humanity, and see that it was begun in this week that we
have spent together in our National Capital, which we trust may be redeemed
from all that is debasing, all that is immoral, all that is wrong, and hereafter
be pointed out as the city of God, where right and justice prevail.
Miss Anthony. There are a great many on the platform who want to
422 International Council of Women.
speak and give their highest thoughts as to the true life and true theory; but
we shall have to stop, and before we close I would like to call your
attention to the grand motto, which the great leader of this movement,
Lucretia Mott, used to write in the albums when the young people
came to her for autographs, which was, it seems to me, the basis upon
which all our investigations with regard to the present and the future, with
regard to God and man, should be founded. Her motto was : " Truth for
authority; not authority for truth." It seems to me that the great danger
to the race is, that as fast as we are emancipated from one authority, we
drop into another, whether it is founded in truth or not. Hence, friends,.
I feel that the work for women to-day, in religion, as in every other
department of thought and of action, is to make truth their authority.
I want to call your attention to two pamphlets, which, through mistake,
have been pushed aside with the abundance of literature t hat has been cir-
culated at the door. The first is entitled "The Outlook for Woman," a
sermon preached by Dr. James C. Jackson, of Dansville, N. Y., but a short
time since. The sentiment that he has placed on the title-page is :
" Thou, from on high, perceivest it were better
AH men and women should on earth be free;
Laws that enslave and tyrannies that fetter
Snap and evanish at the touch of thee."
This little pamphlet Dr. Jackson bad printed and sent down a thousand
copies to be distributed among the friends in attendance upon the Council.
I hope you will take one as you pass out, and, when you have read it,,
give it to somebody who needs it. One great work in all this reform is to-
possess ourselves of all the literature on the question and pass it around.
The other pamphlet is a letter to the International Council of Women at
Washington from Josephine E. Butler, of England. You all know that is-
worth reading.
Last Sunday afternoon was appropriated to the women who had had the-
hands of men laid on their heads in ordination. This afternoon we have
devoted to the highest utterances of women whom men have not ordained,,
excepting Antoinette Brown Blackwell. I want to call on Miss Wil-
lard, but perhaps we ought to stop here. [Applause and calls for Miss-
Willard.] Well, Miss Willard, come forward and tell us what you think
about true religion.
Miss Willard. Dear friends, I am of a most excursive sort of mind,
naturally very difficult to train and to prune, especially on spiritual subjects.
I remember, as a little girl, when this dear old lady, now in her eighty-first year,
was a student at Oberlin, and my mother was a student there, too, although
she had three little children around her. Father and mother went there-
after they had their family. I was playing around with my toys on the-
floor, and my mother pointed to me and said : " Mrs. Hills, there is Frankie;
she is my little infidel." And Mrs. Hills was shocked at my mother, because
Religious Symposium. 423
she thought it was a fearful thing for her to say. But my mother was a very
wise woman ; she knew I was a kind of intellectual trout, and she fished and
angled after me a good deal, humoring my coy ways, and never seeming
shocked when I told her my outreachings of spirit this way and that. Some-
times I used, in my audacity of nature, which has been very much tempered
in later years, I used to try to think up something that would scare mother
and make her think that I was going to be very bad, but I never could.
When I had misbehaved and wasn't good and nice as a little girl, she always
used to say : " Why, they have brought in some changeling ; some peddler
has dropped a strange child here ; where is my nice little Frances? " So,
then, it didn't pay to be ugly. And when I would say my very daring things
about not believing, and asked her how she knew that Book was a true
Book, that was on father's knee every morning at family worship, she never
troubled to give me any particular answer, but would stroke me on the
head, and sometimes break out into a sweet old hymn ; I was very fond of
hymns, and I think mother won me by the singing of the faith she loved.
When I went to school we had our twilight hour, and my teachers,
some that I loved especially, would come into my room and bring in some
other girls, and they would have an evening sing out of the hymn-book, for
when I went away to school it was given out in the prayer-meeting the very
first time my name was mentioned in Evanston, where I have lived thirty
years and been a good Methodst twenty-nine of them, that here was a
young woman of some promise, of a sort of adventurous nature, and she
was an infidel, and they hoped the people would pray for her ; but they didn't
take me and try to shape me and put me into a place, for I am pretty sure
if they had I should not have gone into it, but it was so sweet at home, and
mother didn't have any canting ways of talking, and I knew mother couldn't
be far wrong, and so I think that the divinity that she was to me, and my
father's earnest life brought me into a way that otherwise I might not have
known. I should have been one of the easiest to have gone into the paths
that mother would have grieved over.
And while to all I have heard to-day I have listened reverently, sisterly,
kindly, just as the women are now listening to me — they are just as willing
that I should speak my deepest thoughts as I was willing 'that they should —
still, I will tell you how it is with me. I go like a bee into the gardens of
thought ; I love to listen to all the voices, and I go buzzing around under
the bonnets of the prettiest flowers and the most fragrant, just like this bee,
and when it is a lovely life and a sweet life, like the lives of those who have
spoken to us to-day, it seems to me I get a lot of honey ; but I have a won-
derful bee-line fashion of carrying it all home to my own Methodist hive. I
couldn't do any other way. I am made that fashion ; it is part of me. It
is worked into the woof and warp of my spirit, the result of the sweet
old ways in which I was brought up. I should have to deny myself in my
424 International Council of Women.
inmost heart, if I didn't believe what mother had taught me at her knee. If
I didn't, above all the teachings and all the voices, reverence the voice that
calls to me from the pages of the Bible; if I didn't, above all things and
always, in my mentality and spirituality, translate God into the term of Jesus
Christ. I can not rest except there. And so I frankly tell you how it is
with me this sweet Easter Day. The inmost voice, deep down in my heart,
says : " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ! Receive it as I sit here listening to
women whom I love and revere and honor for their loyalty to what they
believe is the highest and best. Receive it as I go forth into the crowded
ways of life with so many voices calling me on every hand. Receive my
spirit ! It will be the last thought that this brain will think, it will be the
last quiver of this heart that has ached and rejoiced. " Lord Jesus, receive
my spirit ! ' '
Miss Anthony. This evening will close the sessions of this eight-day
Council, and Mrs. Wallace has left the platform because she felt she could
not perform her duty this evening if she remained here any longer. Mrs.
Stanton has been absent from this platform so much of the time yesterday
and to-day, because she is preparing her last words to the Council, as to its
meaning and its results. So I hope you will all feel that the very best of the
whole week, is to come at the last session this evening. I must say just here,
that to me it is perfectly splendid that all these women who have spoken this
afternoon, each one having a glimpse of what seems to her the great truth,
can come here and express their highest thought with a feeling that they do
not wish to force anybody else into thinking just as they do. That is the
lesson which this Council has taught to-day. Women are not so narrow but
that they can come together and talk over their religious beliefs, and see
down beneath the whole, the true spirit, the true woman, and be ready to
work together in spite of their differences.
Samuel Longfellow's beautiful hymn, "The Church Univer-
sal," was then sung. Adjourned.
SUNDAY, APRIL 1, 1888.
EVENING SESSION."
CLOSE OF THE COUNCIL.
Invocation by Mrs. Mary H. Hunt.
The Chairman. The delegates to this Council, representing over fifty
organizations, of different nations, yesterday, in meeting assembled, adopted
constitutions for permanent Councils of Women, both National and Interna-
tional. The basic principles were very nearly the same, and you may read
the constitutions, the officers elected, and the incipient steps which have
been taken by this Council, in the Woman's Tribune of a later day.* Mad-
ame Bogelot will now read you her first English words — a farewell to us.
Madame Bogelot. Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame President : At the
beginning of your International Council you have lent to me good will in
hearing my notes in French language. They expressed the sentiments of
my heart, and gave a description of the works of my society. But I grieve
very much not to know your language, especially as I was alone to represent
my beloved France, your sister. Everywhere and always I have found here
sympathy and helpfulness. Also I have listened to your discourses with a
very great attention. My head is broken, but my heart is very happy because
I know you will be glad in hearing me tell it in your own language. I will
return in fifteen days, but I shall visit, before I go, the Baltimore, Philadel-
phia, New York, and Boston prisons. If I find your prisoners better cared
for than ours, I shall pray my French brothers to imitate my American
brothers.
Excuse my audacity. I try to speak English for the first time. Accept
expression of my sincere gratitude. To speak English is to be of your
family. Not forget me. I not forget you. I thank also my friend and
expounder, Miss Bradley, of New York, doctor of Paris faculty.
Madame Bogelot's broken English was received with great
appreciation, and the hearty applause conveyed to her the sym-
pathy and congratulations of all.
The Chairman. Miss Allie Trygg, of Finland, an associate of the Bar-
oness Gripenberg, who has been ill, will say a word to you, also in English.
You will remember that at the opening of this Council, she gave us her
greeting in her native language.
Miss Trygg. When I, last Monday, had the honor to speak to you from
this platform, I was obliged to do so in my own language because it was
♦See report of Committee of Arrangements.
28
426 International Council of Women.
impossible for me to speak in English. Now I will try to say a few words
in your language, for you see, among all the wonderful things this Inter-
national Council has done, it has even beautifully improved my English. I
must, however, beg you to excuse my language and not mind the grammar
or pronunciation. Only think of the feeling of my heart.
Ladies and gentlemen, I come from a little poor country, far in the
North of Europe. Many of you have, perhaps, not heard the name of
it, although I, to my astonishment, have found that you here in America
know much more about our country, than in England. This country
is Finland. Europe is old, but contains many countries yet young in
culture. Our little land is one of these new-born in culture. I must, how-
ever, inform you that we have the most northern railway in the world.
Everything there is new and young; that is also the case with the woman's
question. I leave to you to decide how old it is, in telling you that I am
one of the pioneers there. But, although it is young it is full of life. This
is evident in that we have sent two from this little distant country, when so
many richer and larger nations have sent none.
As I wrote to Miss Anthony when inviting me to the Council, "An
International Woman's Congress has always been the great dream of my life."
Since the hour I read in my country's newspapers about this Council, I had
rest neither day nor night before I was sure I could come. How joyfully I
hastened over the ocean ! No, I did not hasten, because I came by the
oldest and slowest of the Cunard line steamers, but I hastened in my heart,
and my only fear was that the reality would not correspond to my hope. It
has always been so in my whole life, that where I have been waiting and
hoping most, there I always have been most disappointed in my hope. But
now here, the very first time in my life, it has not been as before. Here the
reality has ten and a hundred times exceeded my greatest hope. Every day
I have enjoyed more and more of what I have seen and heard.
As I already have mentioned, the woman question is still new in Finland.
It is a little baby, and we don't know what shall be of it ; we only have a
sincere belief and hope in its future. And even this belief — I am ashamed
to confess it — has sometimes failed me. I have seen my countrywomen and
also the women of other countries, occupy their souls with insignificant
trifles, instead of letting them grow for the work of the great questions of
humanity. When I have seen that the chief purpose of their life has been
to adorn their bodies instead of their souls, then I have sometimes felt very
weak in my belief. You see, also, the strongest might sometimes feel weak.
You remember that one of the greatest among them that are born of women,
John the Baptist, when in prison, was seized by the spirit of doubt and sent
his disciples to Christ to ask, "Art thou he that cometh, or look we for an-
other ? ' ' Then I crossed the ocean and came here. I have been with you
all these days, and since I have seen how you have loved, suffered, and
Close of the Council. 427
worked, now when I can, so to say, touch with my hands the great results of
women's work, I need not more believe and hope, now I know. "And
when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part shall be done
away; " therefore I now have come to a point in my position towards the
woman question as much higher than before, as knowledge is higher than
hope. Therefore is my heart full of joy, and I feel quiet for the future. I
can say with Jacob, when he returned to his fatherland from Mesopotamia,
"Only with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two
bands." As Jacob, I shall return to my fatherland, crossing the Jordan —
or a water larger than that, as you know — richer, as he was, but my riches
are better than his. I feel myself rich because I now have the sincere belief
in women's love, women's power, women's ability, women's energy, which
never can fail. And for that belief I wish to thank you from the very bot-
tom of my heart.
We in Finland have known only a little about your grand work here; but
hereafter it shall not be my fault if the women in Finland shall not know
more about you. As you have been a living sermon to me, you will be it
for the other women of my country. If their feet should stumble, if their
heads feel tired, their hearts discouraged, then you shall stand before us as
the great patriarchs and prophets stood for the author of the Epistle of the
Hebrews, when he showed his congregation all those who had with patience
run the race that was set before them. And then when we are discouraged
I will say to the women of my country, " Behold, on the other side of the
Atlantic ! There we have so great a cloud of witnesses who have struggled
and won the victory. Lay aside every discouragement which doth so
easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."
Hereafter there will be a golden cable of sympathy between you and us.
Every victory you will win shall be ours; you work not only for the women
of your country, but for the women of the whole world. I will not longer
occupy your precious time. I will finish now, thanking you from the very
bottom of my heart for everything; also, for the magnificent hospitality
you have shown us. You have taken care as well of the bodily as of the
spiritual part of us. I thank you for all that you have given me and my
country through me. God bless your work!
Miss Trygg is a very vivacious and earnest speaker, and her
charmingly natural manner made "her address very attractive.
She was warmly applauded.
Miss Anthony. And now we must have a farewell from Norway.
Mrs. Groth. I thank you very much for all your hospitality and kindness.
Miss Anthony. I have a most magnificent thing to tell you this even-
ing. There is a woman in this city who has authorized me to announce
that she has appropriated a whole block, which she owns, to the establish-
428 International Council of Womer
ment of a great institution for the education of women. She has not
decided the details, or exactly what it shall be, but it is for the education
and development of women, intellectually, morally, spiritually, politically,
and every way possible. The woman is " Olivia " — Mrs. Briggs — who will
devote her beautiful " Maple Square" to this glorious work for the uplifting
of women in this country.
This announcement was received with great applause.
Miss Anthony. I introduce to you now a Mother in Israel, Mrs.
Zerelda G. Wallace, of Indiana.
Mrs. Wallace. I am announced on the programme to give you an
address upon the moral power of the ballot. I shall ask your indulgence for
myself, as you often are asked for other public speakers, to allow me to take
my text and leave it. Possibly I may cross it at right angles before I get
through ; possibly not.
You have witnessed in the last week in this city a wonderful spectacle, the
first on record in the history of the past, where woman from ten nationalities
have met in council and upon this platform, to plead for freedom for them-
selves in the name of and for the good of humanity. Who shall tell, my
dear friends, the significance of this meeting, and who shall tell what will be
the results? It bodes good, and only good, to the race. There has been
nothing more misapprehended by the public than this effort which women
are making to secure for themselves the blessings of political freedom. And
right here I say to the gentlemen of this audience, that we acknowledge the
obligations which we are under to you. Only in these United States of
America, where freedom has done so much for manhood, and manhood has
done so much for womanhood, could such a meeting as this be possible— the
freest nation in the world, where a thought once born goes reverberating
around the globe, will never stop in its march till all humanity is free, and until
this tree of liberty, which was planted more than a hundred years ago by our
forefathers, watered by the tears of women and the blood of men, shall take
deep root, and all the nations of the world shall bask under its branches.
It is the privilege, nay, not only the right and privilege, but the duty, of
every human being to be like God ; that was the intention and the purpose
from the beginning, to create humanity in God's image, and that work is
going on to-day. But the one requisite to the success of that work is that
humanity must be free, enjoying liberty, not license ; liberty under law,
enacted by its own volition. That is the distinguishing characteristic of
God. He alone, of all beings in the universe, governs himself by self-im-
posed laws. And humanity, by virtue of its descent from God, is crowned
king. It is not mind nor class nor race, but humanity, that is the king of the
universe. And humanity, by virtue of its relation to God, is immortal. The
first requisite for this building which the Great House-Builder had in his
thoughts in the ages of the past, is freedom. Next to freedom is knowledge,
Close of the Council. 429
and next to knowledge is faith in the moral powers of the universe ; faith in
God ; faith in our own origin, and faith in our own destiny.
As I look over this magnificent continent and this great heritage which
God has given us, I feel that here humanity is to work out this grandest of
all problems, the ability of the race for self-government. I know that the
men of this nation have struggled grandly (and succeeded, in a meas-
ure) to work out this problem. But you can not do it, dear brothers,
without the aid of woman. Woman is one-half of the great whole,
and she lies at the base of all human progress. The greatest and grand-
est evolution of creation will be humanity perfected in the image of
God ; and if it took ages and ages to create this world as a fit habi-
tation for man in his animal and material conditions, how many cen-
turies will it take to perfect man himself? So I regard this whole question as
a growth. I am never discouraged. I work and bide the working of the
forces which I can see already put in motion, which shall consummate the pur-
poses of the Divine. This Council is no small indication that that purpose
is nearing its completion.
Speaking of the great inheritance given us upon which we are to work out
this grandest of problems, we are to-day the richest nation by hundreds of
thousands of dollars of any nation in the world. We could buy out Russia,
Austria, Norway, Sweden, Australia, South America, Africa, and almost all
the nations of the earth, dollar for dollar. Does anybody believe that God
has given to us such a heritage as that for our own self-aggrandizement ? that
we are to fold our arms about us and enjoy this heritage alone ? No ; he has
given us this under the most favorable conditions, and we are expected, nay, it
is our duty, under the Divine Providence, to work out here this problem
and demonstrate that we are able to govern ourselves ; that we are not only
to do that, but we are to magnify God's wisdom in our creation. I am not
one of those who believe that humanity is to be a failure, and this republic
to perish from the earth. The merest tyro in business would not have put
forth such energies as God has put forth for humanity, if it were to be pro-
nounced a failure. No, dear friends, never lose faith in that power outside
ourselves first, but incarnated in ourselves now, that is to make for righteous-
ness. You may say that is like a woman, full of fanaticism, full of emotion.
But what is it that distinguishes personality from force — dead matter ! A
gentleman said here the other day that he believed he was cut out for a
woman, because his emotions ran away with him. It is emotion, it is mind,
it is thought, it is feeling, which distinguishes humanity from brute force.
Not only does it do that, but it shows us our relationship to the great First
Cause. If we, his offspring, have personality ; if we, his offspring, have mind ;
if we his offspring have thought, and feeling, our Father has also.
We heard arguments to-day as to what science would do outside of reve-
lation. I want no higher science than I read right here to convince me of
430 International Council of Women.
my relationship to the great Infinite. But in order, dear friends, to
work out successfully this great problem which God has given us, we
must bring our laws into harmony with his will. And what is that will?
" God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that none
should perish, but all should have eternal life." This is the will of God —
that we work for humanity. Christ recognized, when he was here, that any
work done for humanity was done for him. And if humanity would gov-
ern itself, if it would be like God, it must work for the benefit and advance-
ment of the race. The great apostle tells us that our faith shall be swal-
lowed up in knowledge, and hope, in fruition ; that love is the immortal
passion that endures forever ; love only is immortal, and if we would be like
God, if we would reach that immortality that he has in store for us, if we
would reach that development of character which it is his purpose that we
should reach, our hearts must be permeated with love to him first, and we
must love our neighbor as ourselves.
We hear a great deal about the growth of civilization. Dear friends, what
is civilization ? In what does it consist ? Does it consist in your marble
palaces ? In your railroads ; your electric lights ; your telephones and tele-
graphs ? True civilization is to deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly
with God. When the Christ was here, he was approached by a lawyer who
asked him what he should do to inherit eternal life. " Love the Lord, thy
God, with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." "Whatsoever ye
would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them." This is the
law and the prophets ; these are the two greatest commandments. And do
I say too much, when I say that for these commandments to permeate and
influence our lives, is true civilization ?
Dear friends, take the practical application of the philosophy of Jesus of
Nazareth to-day and apply it to all the problems that are confronting us.
How long do you suppose it would take us to solve them ? First of all,
if the men of this nation would do as they would like to be done by, we
wouldn't have to stand here pleading with you year after year, now forty
years, asking you, under a government which derives its just powers from
the consent of the governed, to clothe us with the ballot. If you loved us as
you love yourselves, you would make us equal with you in all the privileges and
blessings of this great nation — I will not say great republic, because it is not
a republic ; the world has never yet known a republic. A republic is a gov-
ernment of the people where the power rests in the hands of the people, and
one-half of the people of this Government have no power in it except a
surreptitious, or indirect, or irresponsible power, which is always detrimental
to those who exercise it, and detrimental to those upon whom it is exercised.
If we loved our neighbors as ourselves, and did as we would others should
do unto us, how quickly would these knotty problems of labor and capital
be solved ! It doesn't mean that one class shall love another class to the
C lose of the Council. 431
exclusion of itself. You may love yourself as much as you like, provided
you will let that love which you have for yourself, be the measure of your
love for me, and you will never wrong me and I shall never wrong you, if
we take that measure. I am glad to see that the secular press in many in-
stances is coming to the conviction, to use an old proverb, that "honesty
is the best policy," and that it pays to do right.
We think we have a Government based on public opinion. We have
not. The women of the nation have little or no voice ; not only that, but
the public opinion of the men does not govern in our great cities. At least
if it does, we have some pretty bad men to govern us. We know to-day
that our republican institutions are a failure in our great cities, and that we
are governed not by public sentiment, but by an armed police. One of the
greatest thinkers of this continent asks: " What is to be the future of this
nation, when we become New York all over?"
We talk about the voice of the people being the voice of God. If that be
true the voice of God has never yet been heard in human government while
one-half the race is silent. Now, gentlemen might ask me what I promise
them will be gained by giving women the power of the ballot. I have not
said that I believe woman will solve this question affirmatively. I have said,
though, gentlemen, that I do not believe you can do it without her aid.
But my faith has grown so strong in the last ten days that I shall say that I
believe woman will solve it; you, with her aid, will solve it affirmatively.
Miss Anthony. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President of the National
Woman Suffrage Association, and, by virtue of that office, President of this
Council, will now address you.
Mrs. Stanton. In closing this International Council of Women I have
been chosen to bring in the unanimous verdict, "A complete success from
every point of view."
The immense numbers in attendance at every session prove the interest
the public feel in what the women of the nation have to say. The harmony
and order of the proceedings, considering the varied interests represented,
and the widely-different opinions of the Convention, prove that women are
ready for combined action. The discussions, covering a wide range of sub-
jects, showing much thought and research, have been highly creditable to
our speakers. The large majority of the papers have been worthy the occa-
sion, delivered in a round, full voice, and heard in every part of the house.
The moral tone of the speeches has been unexceptionally of a high order.
The paper read last night by Helen Gardener was an unanswerable argu-
ment to the twaddle of the scientists on woman's brain. The facts she gave
us were so encouraging that I started life again this morning, with renewed
confidence that my brain might hold out a few years longer. I have always
said I did not wish to go into the kingdom of heaven disfranchised, and
have looked forward with pleasure to introducing myself to St. Peter at the
432 International Council of Women.
gate as an American citizen, and Helen has made that hope seem practical.
The reports given of the work done by women in the fifty-three* different or-
ganizations represented here have filled us all with surprise and admiration,
and the more, when we remember that women have had to force their way to-
every vantage-ground they hold. Though ever willing to do the drudgery
of the world in all philanthropic reforms without praise or pay, yet, thus far,
they have literally begged for the privilege of helping to mitigate the miseries-
of mankind.
This beautiful auditorium, decorated with the flags of each of our States
and the various nationalities, is a fitting frame for the historic picture of this
International Council. Happy are those who have lived to see this day,
when so many different countries are represented on one platform. A letter
received from a Nihilist this rrorning adds Russia to the list. This letter is-
from Prince Kropotkin, who suffered five years' imprisonment under the
French Republic for advocating the cause of the people. The bravery and
endurance of young Russian women in the dungeons of St. Petersburg and
the mines of Siberia, in their struggles for national liberty, prove triumph-
antly that woman knows how to die for a principle. I had the pleasure of
meeting both Stepniak and Prince Kropotkin in London, and in a long in-
terview of three hours they explained to me fully what Nihilism means in
Russia. I think those who have read Judge Kennan's articles in the
Century will readily accord all praise and honor to the noble Russian
women who have so courageously identified themselves in the struggle for
freedom, and expiated their love of liberty on the scaffold.
Letters from so many countries in the Old World show that this Interna-
tional Council has awakened new hopes in all for united efforts in the cause
of the common people in every nation on the globe. The contrast between
the first convention of women ever held and this, marks the growth of forty
years, and if the measure of our duties is in proportion to the vantage-
ground we hold, our demands for human freedom must be far broader than
they were forty years ago. For the first convention all the preparations
were made in a day. A notice as long as your finger was printed in the
county paper calling the meeting for the next week. This and a few private
letters were all the notices given. But the Methodist church in which it
was held, was crowded, and the proceedings were abundantly ridiculed by
the press from Maine to Louisiana. I shall never forget my astonashment at
having the dream of my young life so severely ridiculed. The demand we
made was so rational, the justice so apparent, that I thought the simple state-
ment would convince every one.
The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the spirit of English
law as set forth by Blackstone, the genius of republican institutions, all
seemed to make the position we had taken in the Convention so unassailable,
* See pages 49 and 50. The New England Hospital for Women and Children, Delegate, Mrs.
Ednah D. Cheney, was, by mistake, omitted from this list.
Close of the Council. 433
that we were wholly unprepared for opposition, much less ridicule. We felt
as you can imagine a body of soldiers in a strong fortress would feel if,
knowing themselves, with their high walls, cannon mounted, every approach
impregnable, every outpost guarded, safe beyond all peradventure they should
suddenly find themselves undermined and the earth beneath their feet giving
way. Our principles all swept away by the breath of ridicule, there was
nothing to stand on. Our best friends laughed at us and were ashamed that
any of their kin should be identified with such a movement.
Now all is changed. Busy preparations for the International Council have
been going on for a year. Hundreds of letters in the way of consultation and
invitations written ; hundreds of documents published and scattered ; thou-
sands of dollars raised for expenses, and the most beautiful edifice in our Na-
tional Capital secured for the Council. Now, friends press us warmly by the
hand and shower blessings on our heads, and the tone of the press in gene-
ral is complimentary, and thus it ever is. The highest truth uttered to-day,
though startling to some ears, will be verified in the near future. We can not
overestimate the moral effect this Council must surely have on women them-
selves, on the nation at large and on the world. It must have a marked
influence in giving us all broader charity for the differences of customs and
opinions, arousing good feeling, and helping forward the day when all inter-
national difficulties will be settled by arbitration.
The Queen of England last year held her jubilee, when the nation
poured out its wealth and laid most costly presents at her feet, when all
her subjects in every land, and the isles of the sea, were taxed to do her
honor. This year the queens of America have assembled by the hundreds
to hold their jubilee, to lay their richest gifts of intellect, of moral and
spiritual power on the altar of their country. From all ranks of life, from
the halls of science and the workshop, from the trades and professions,
they have come, one after another, to tell in glowing words what they have
done in deeds of charity, in philanthropic enterprises, in the industries,
in education, in literature and art, to glorify our great republic. No one
could listen to the grand women who have voiced this progress of the
last half-century, without a feeling of pride in the nation that has made
such women possible.
And now, in this year of our jubilee, what do we ask in turn, of our
country? [That all artificial barriers that in any way cripple our freedom,
be thrown down, and that all the opportunities for self-development that
the country affords be secured to us ; unjust laws repealed, the most vener-
able colleges thrown open, an equal code of morals for men and women,
and Jurisdiction in our courts over all that class of crime which belongs spe-
cifically to women. We ask an equal right to regulate everything in the
outside world that affects the moral status of our children ; the atmosphere
of our homes, schools, and the streets of jaur cities ; the science and philos-
ophy taught in our colleges, the theology in our churches ; the true princi-
434 International Council of Women.
pies of political economy in government. We do not wish to have our sons
taught any theories in college life that will lower their respect for women.
We do not wish to have them taught in the church that woman was an after-
thought in the creation ; that marriage for her is a condition of slavery,
maternity a curse, and her proper position, ever one of subordination. All
these basic ideas affect the character of our children and their estimate of
woman j hence we should have a voice in the system of education, of relig-
ion, of government. 7
For the men of the nation we ask the intelligent, conscientious counsel of
wise women. If you would have men faithful in their duties to the State,
cultivate patriotism in women. If you would broaden the outlook of man,
making country ever first in his estimation, do not center woman's thought
on personal and family aggrandizement, for where her thoughts are centered,
his best efforts will be also. It needs but little philosophy to see that in
proportion as the circle of woman's sympathy extends itself beyond the
family to her neighborhood, her State, her country, and the world, will she
inspire the men of her family with broader views as to the scope of govern-
ment, as to all national and international questions. To this end we ask you
to celebrate our jubilee by placing on woman's brow the crown of American
citizenship, and in her hand the ballot, that great scepter of power for self-
defense and protection.
I would press on your consideration, my sisters, to-night, not your right,
but your duty to vote — to do your part in the great work of government.
Suppose, by the death of a husband, a woman were suddenly left with a
magnificent estate and a large family of children. What should we say of
such a woman should she leave her children untrained and uneducated, to
play on the highway, and her estate to fall into ruin, left wholly to the man-
agement of her elder sons, who robbed the younger children of their birth-
right, wasting their share of the income in riotous living? The more grace-
ful and refined such a woman, the more intelligent and gifted, the more
gentle and affable, the more artistic in dress and pose, the more utterly con-
temptible would she seem to us in her apathy and indifference to all the most
sacred duties of life.
Our fathers and mothers have left us a magnificent inheritance bought
with a great price. Together they shared the dangers of a stormy sea in
the little Mayflower, the dreary landing on Plymouth Rock, the rigors of a
New England winter, and the privations of a seven years' war. In untold
sufferings and self-denial they laid the corner-stones of this republic in jus-
tice and equality; that here the lovers of liberty, escaping from the tyranny
of kingcraft and priestcraft in the Old World, might enjoy civil and religious
freedom forever.
Everything was favorable for the grand experiment. Three thousand miles
of ocean between us and the civilizations of the Old World, without a
si v:
Close of the Council. - 435
steamer or telegraph for two centuries, the savage and the wilderness our
only obstacles, Man has done his material work grandly and well ; he has
ploughed up our prairies, bridged our rivers and chasms, with his railroads
linked the Pacific and Atlantic together, made our flag respected in every
harbor, and our internal commerce the wonder of the world. And now the
time has fully come for woman to look after her inheritance, and share the
responsibility of securing justice and equality to every citizen under our flag,
lest the growing elements of discontent shall, in the near future, make it im-
possible.
Landing in New York two weeks ago, I saw four hundred steerage passen-
gers leave the vessel. Dull-eyed, heavy-visaged, stooping with huge burdens
and the oppressions they endured in the Old World, they stood in painful
contrast with the group of brilliant women on their way to the International
Council to be held here in Washington. I thought, as this long line passed
by, of the speedy transformation the genial influences of equality would
effect in the appearance of these men, of the new dignity they would acquire
with a voice in the laws under which they live, and I rejoiced for them ; but
bitter reflections filled my mind when I thought these men are the future
rulers of our daughters; these will interpret the civil and criminal codes by
which they will be governed ; these will be our future judges and jurors to
try young girls in our courts for the crime of infanticide, for trial by a jury
of her peers has never yet in the history of the world been vouchsafed to
women, with two rare exceptions, Wyoming and Washington Territories.
Here is a right so ancient that it is difficult to trace its origin in history —
a right so sacred that the humblest criminal may choose his juror. But,
alas for the daughters of the people, their judges, advocates, jurors, must be
men, and for them there is no appeal. But this is only one wrong among
many inevitable to a disfranchised class. It is impossible for you, gentle-
men, to appreciate the humiliations women suffer at every turn.
My joy in reaching my native land and meeting dear friends and family
once more, was shadowed by that vision on the wharf and by the knowledge
that by thousands still they come, and from lands where woman, as a mere
beast of burden, is infinitely more degraded than by any possibility she can
be here. Do you wonder, in view of what the character of our future law-
makers may be, that we are filled with apprehensions of coming evil, and
that we feel that there is no time to be lost if our Saxon fathers ever propose
to throw around us the protecting power of law and Constitution ? If native-
born American men will not do justice to their own mothers, wives, and sis-
ters, what have we to hope in the future of foreign rulers, with the low ideas
of woman into which they are educated ? The next generation of women
will not argue with their rulers as patiently as we have done, and to so little
purpose for half a century. You have now the power, Men of the Republic,
to settle this question by moral influences, by wise legislation. But if you
436 International Council of Women.
can not be aroused to its serious consideration, like every other step in prog-
ress, it will eventually be settled by violence. The wild enthusiasm of
woman can be used for evil as well as for good. To-day you have the power
to guide and direct it into channels of true patriotism, but in future, with
all the elements of discontent now gathering from foreign lands, you may
have the scenes of the French Commune repeated in our land. In all the
struggles for liberty in the past women have ever taken an active part, and it
is fair to suppose that they will do the same in the future. Awake to their
own wrongs, as they never have been before, and exasperated with a sense
of the prolonged oppressions of their sex, it requires no prophet to foretell
the revolutions ahead, when women strike hands with Nihilists, Socialists,
Communists, and Anarchists, in defense of the most enlarged liberties of the
people.
i^nd now let me ask you, my sisters, in all seriousness, are you satisfied
with the role you have played during the last century of our national life?
Go into the by-ways of our great cities and look at the swarming multitudes
of children growing up in ignorance and poverty ; look at the vice and mis-
ery of their surroundings, and the disgusting filth of the streets and houses
where they dwell. Go into our jails and prisons, and see the cruelties in-
flicted on humanity there, all, places of punishment, rather than reformation ;
go into our factories and see the worn and weary men, women and children,
every nerve at the highest tension to keep time with machinery driven by
steam ; go into our poor-houses, asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the blind,
the lunatic, the idiot ; go into our houses of prostitution, and consider well the
causes of all these harrowing social problems, and as you weep and pray over
the sins and sufferings of the multitude, remember that all this can and must
be changed, and that you have the same responsibility in accomplishing this
change as the man by your side. This branch of government, regulating
the morals of the people, belongs specifically to woman ; and the first step to
this end, is to make you believe that the happiness and prosperity of all the
people of a nation are possible. Education and equal legislation can change
all this and make our earth a paradise. We must have no more sermons
from the text "The poor ye have always with you." I heard a sermon
preached from this text once, in which the preacher spoke of the extremes of
poverty and wealth as a most beneficent arrangement of Providence, calling
out the virtues of charity on the one sida and of gratitude on the other.
If the women of this nation will henceforth give all the thought, the time,
the force, the enthusiasm, to the practical work of this life, that they hav
heretofore expended in speculations and preparations for the future, we might
bring sunshine into every home, open the prison doors, transfer all the
heavy burdens from the shoulders of men to tireless machinery, and gradu-
ally lessen the roll-call of the unfortunates. We have thus far had no end
of trouble and anxiety about saving the souls of the human family, and
Close of the Council. 437
heart-rending speculations as to the next sphere of action. Let us concen-
trate our thoughts henceforth on the best interests of the masses here. Let
us look after their bodies, teach them the laws of health and how to live. The
best possible preparation for the next form of existence is to fulfill our duties
here. I like Matthew Arnold's definition of religion. He says, " Religion
is science touched with emotion." I want women to feel that it is their
religious duty to take part in government, the most exalted of all sciences ;
and yet women often talk as if it would compromise their dignity and
refinement to vote.
What are the great questions involved in government? Our relations
with foreign countries, taxes, tariffs, finance, religion, education ; all ques-
tions of social life, marriage, divorce, the rights of children, the sanitary
conditions of our homes, schools, and cities. Now is it possible that a
woman with the ordinary number of convolutions in her brain, and the
usual amount of gray matter, can be unwilling to inform herself and express
her opinion at the polls on such questions? It is this class of unthinking,
conscienceless, women who go into fashionable society with low-necked
dresses and bare arms, their persons so exposed as to make every modest
woman blush.
I remember once we held a convention in Newport in the fashionable sea-
son. In the parlor, one morning, when it was filled with ladies, one of
them said to me, "We attended your convention last night." I said : "I
am very happy to hear it. How did you enjoy it?" " Oh," said another,
"we enjoyed it very much; but we rather shrink from the idea of a woman
being exposed on a public platform." " Why," I said, " my dear lady, I
came in here rather late last night, and, as I enjoy the harmony of motion
and music, I sat here a little while and looked at you all dance. I saw you,
with your low necks and bare arms, whirling around in the arms of gentle-
men to whom you had just been introduced, and I thought you were shame-
fully exposed. I should have shrunk from having a woman dressed as you
were on the platform. You were much more exposed than we were." "Oh,
yes," said she, "but the papers are full about you, telling everything you do
and say." " Well," said I, "I saw you all this morning reading the pa-
pers describing your dresses, your grace and beauty last night, and I pre-
sume if there was one of you who was not mentioned you were very much
disappointed. The only difference is, the papers tell what we say upon great
questions; they describe how you look. I leave it for you to decide which
is the more dignified. Where, I ask you, is a woman most exposed, walk-
ing to the polls with her husband in her street-dress, or whirling in the arms
of some other man in full ball-room costume? " I fear, under the domina-
tion of fashion and superstition, we have much rubbish to clear away before
we can get at the true woman.
We shall hope much from the debates we have heard in this grand Council
438 # International Council of Women.
for the future womanhood of our nation. When I think of the magnificent
experiment in government it is our privilege to try, and all the great prob-
lems that await our solution, I feel that we need the united wisdom of every
man and woman to insure our success. Galton, in his great work on " He-
redity," says " the brain of man is already overweighted with the compli-
cated problems of civilization, and the race must be lifted up two or three
degrees to meet them." In every country we see the wisest statesmen at their
wits' end vainly trying to meet the puzzling questions of the hour : In Russia,
it is Nihilism; in Germany, Socialism; in France, Communism; in England,
Home Rule for Ireland and the Disestablishment of the Church, and in
America, Land, Labor, Taxes, Tariffs, Temperance, and Woman Suffrage.
Where shall we look for the new power by which the race can be lifted up
and the human mind made capable of coping with the daily-increasing com-
plications of this new civilization ? Where shall we look but to the educa-
tion, elevation, and enfranchisement of woman? When she stands on an
even platform with man, as an equal factor in government, there will be a
flow and interflow of brain forces that will kindle all their latent powers, vital-
ize their best thoughts, and give strength and dignity to their combined action
in every department of life.
On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association, under whose aus-
pices this International Council has been held, allow me, before adjourning
the Council, to thank the large audiences that have assembled here for
eight consecutive days. Your presence has been very encouraging, and given
us renewed inspiration in our work for the future. I trust, in turn, that all
that has been said here has awakened your minds to the vital importance of
the subjects that have been under consideration. While thanking our foreign
delegates for the long voyage they have taken in response to our invitation,
we can not find words to express the pleasure we feel in having them with us,
nor the sorrow we feel in parting. This has given us an opportunity, too, of
meeting many of our own countrywomen engaged in the various reforms and
industries ; and of making many valuable acquaintances which I am sure we
all appreciate.
After this refreshing interchange of thought in which we have thrilled the
hearts of each other, I trust we shall go forth with renewed consecration in
our labors for the best interests of humanity, leaving the world better than
we found it.
The Council is now adjourned.
LETTERS.
The following is the letter of the Russian Nihilist, Prince
Kropotkin, to which Mrs. Stanton referred :
Roxborough Road, Harrow on the Hill,
London, England, March 12, 1888.
Women of America : It is with profound sympathy that your labors have been
followed by my compatriots, the women of Russia. At the two extremities of the
civilized world the problem that presents itself is one and the same, to abolish the
privileges that have been created for the benefit of one-half of humanity to the
detriment of the other half.
Under a despotic government, which considers the ignorance of its subjects as
the best guarantee of its own supremacy and hastens to crush freedom of thought
under whatever form it shows itself, the Russian women have, nevertheless, suc-
ceeded by their persevering efforts in constructing a whole vast system of instruc-
tion for their sex. For the institutes of old times (a sort of convents) they have
substituted 430 lyceums, which at this moment contain 91,000 pupils. Under the
title of lectures on the art of teaching, they have created for themselves against the
wishes of the government, which found itself forced to yield, a course of secondary
education, preparatory to the studies of the universities. And under the modest
title of lectures for the " Higher Education of Women" they have created four
universities, which were giving instruction absolutely equal to that of the best Ger-
man and French universities to eighteen hundred students, when the government
ordered their abolition.
They have done more. By taking an active and devoted part in the great move-
ment for the emancipation of the people which has been taking place during the last
twenty-five years in Russia, they have conquered their rights as citizens. It was by
working to liberate the Russian people that they have prepared the way for their
own liberation. They have shared all the hardships of the struggle, all the pain of
the persecuted. In prison, in exile, in the mines, dragging their chains beside their
brothers, they have known how to inspire them with their nerve courage, and they
have pleaded their rights to be recognized as citizens by mounting the scaffold, like
Sophia Perovskaya, with calm front and lofty bearing, uniting in her last words the
names of her beloved mother and the Russian peasant for whose liberty she had
lived. If it were not for the despotic government, which at this moment is harass-
ing Russia by its furious pursuit of the very faintest mark of sympathy toward
every flight of emancipating thought, Russian women would surely be among you
to-day taking part in your labors and exchanging with you their ideas, their experi-
ence, their confidence for the future.
But it is not only as a Russian, a witness of the noble struggle of the women of
Russia for liberty, that I permit myself to address you. Women of America, in
your country, as in all civilized lands, you have the supreme happiness to live at an
epoch which history will certainly characterize as the epoch of the awakening of
the masses; the epoch of the bold criticism of all the institutions bequeathed to
us — children of the nineteenth century — by the centuries of barbarism and of war;
the epoch where the march of humanity toward Equality and Liberty is leading us
to Fraternity !
440 International Council of Women.
Living for more than ten years in the very midst of the European workmen, and
having the opportunity to see, to feel this enormous intellectual movement that is
now taking place among the masses; seeing day by day the birth of the great ideas
of freedom and of fraternity in the bosom of those whom the rich and powerful
have condemned to remain forever beneath their domination ; noting day by day
for ten years the dawn of ideas, of rooted convictions, and of earnest devotion
in the heart of the workers, and drawing inspiration myself from this glorious
awakening, I long to tell you that at this moment it is all over with the system
which condemns the masses of mankind to poverty, to overwork, to privation of
all those pleasures of knowledge and of art that alone are capable of rendering
human life a source of happiness; and all this to obtain leisure, wealth, luxury,
for a mere handful among us. The system is condemned, and I affirm, in full
knowledge of the surroundings in which my life is framed, that the century
will not end before the toiling masses make a supreme effort to transform from
beginning to end a state of things which is unjust, degrading, hurtful to human-
ity, and a bar upon progress.
You will see this magnificent struggle of the workers for their liberation taking a
more and more important and serious character. But on which side will you be
found ? "What position will you take in the strife ? Will you be on the side of the
written law without asking yourself if this law be not contrary to justice? Or
else will you be with those who struggle against the law — that miserable legacy
of an obscure past — but for justice, for the equality of all human beings without
distinction of class, race, or sex, the only solid base of true fraternity ? It is your
duty to take a place in the struggle. You can no longer remain mere spectators
if you desire it. The strife forces itself upon your notice by the gallows of Chi-
cago, the fusilades of Paris, the exterminations of rebels in Ireland. But to take
a part in the struggle you must know its cause; you must make clear to yourselves
the meaning of this contest which is being carried on everywhere under the name
of Socialism, beneath the shadow of the star-spangled banner of the United States,
as beneath the shade of the imperial eagle of Russia, in the German monarchy as in
the French republic, in the New World as in the Old.
Under penalty of one day discovering that you are amidst the oppressors acting
against the oppressed, you must find, for yourselves, the true signification of this
strife between the rich and the poor, between workmen and capitalists, between the
creators of social wealth and those who take possession of it. And when, after
having gazed into the abyss of the suffering and iniquities of our existing society,
you return home and see there your ornaments, the luxury of your house, that lux-
ury and those ornaments will disgust you, as they disgusted Sophia Perovskaya and
so many others. You will ask yourself, "Whence comes this fortune? My
father," you will say, " worked." But that girl who, with her weak frame shiver-
ering beneath a threadbare gown, hurries each morning to the factory — her father
worked too ! My husband writes: "The rich will hate you for this. They will
pursue you with foolish abuse, with base insults." No matter ! They did the same
to the first abolitionists. Are they not venerated to-day? Women of America, I
personally belong to that great school of Socialism — anarchism — which seeks to free
the human being from the yoke of authority, at the same time as from the yoke of
capital. After having been with Mrs. Beecher Stowe, with your venerable Presi-
dent, Mrs. Cady Stanton, in the vanguard of the good cause, will you ever admit
the possibility of finding yourselves with the modern enslavers, hunting to death
the revolted slaves of modern times ? Awav with the idea !
Letters. 441
During your Congress you will discuss the political rights of women, and you
will find yourself face to face with this question : Man or woman — has the poor the
same political rights as the rich ? Girl or boy — has the poor the leisure for educa-
tion, when from the age of thirteen or fifteen years he or she must exhaust an
ill-nursed body in the mill, the mine, or the factory ? Stealing education in the
hours of necessary repose, can the poor take the part in the affairs of his or her
nation, or city, that can be taken by professional politicians, who enjoy leisure be-
cause they live upon the produce of the labor of others ? You are about to study
the judicial rights of women. You will censure such an unjust law as that which
permits the man to seize upon the woman's fortune. But what judicial rights does
the woman enjoy who has nothing but the shawl upon her shoulders, and who all
her life has toiled to produce the fortune and provide the demands for the other, for
the woman who never went near a machine, never lifted a spade ?
You are about to speak of that loathsome fact — prostitution. And you will be
forced to ask yourselves, Why has bread been wanting for this child who sells her-
self, when our markets are overflowing with corn ? Why has she, who is led to
work, never been able to buy herself those dresses and ornaments which the idler's
wife displays in the street ? You are about to speak of the industrial condition of
women, of their wages inferior to the wages of men. And you will be brought to
ask yourselves why a woman accepts starvation wages at all. Is it not because all
that she requires to produce new wealth — the soil, the instruments of labor, machin-
ery— all that would enable her merely to live, have been appropriated by the minority ?
Good ! But the husband of that other woman writes as much or more. Why has
she to struggle against poverty in bringing up her children ? And why, then, am I
living in opulence? What are my rights to this opulence? "Is not my wealth
woven of the poverty of my sisters ? " But if this question confronts you, you will
be forced to do as Sophia Perovskaya did. Flee this luxury; join the ranks of the
workers; bring them your enlightenment and your energy; aid them in their strug-
gle for freedom.
But I will not even attempt to convert you to my principles. Seek the truth for
yourselves; judge for yourselves the divers schools of socialism, and, perforce you
will be brought to join the ranks of militant socialists. The great mass of mankind
groans beneath the privilege bequeathed to it by history. But here, as elsewhere,
the grand martyr, the one who suffers most from this privilege, the one who bears
the heaviest burden, is still, and is always, the woman. Rich or poor, maiden or
mother, it is still the woman who bends lowest beneath the iniquities that weigh
upon mankind. Work for her liberation. All our wishes, all our sympathies go
with you. But you can obtain the complete liberation of women only by working
for the liberation of humanity. Prince Pierre Kropotkin.
March, 1888.
We give a few of the letters expressing sympathy with the
demand for equality of rights for women.
1 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, N. Y., March 2, 1888.
Dear Miss Anthony: Your letter received, and I am thankful for it, because it
allows me the opportunity of doing two things: to send you hearty greeting for all
the good you have done and are doing, and also to say that, notwithstanding any-
thing you may have read to the contrary, I am, and always have been, in favor of
woman's suffrage. I advocate in my pulpit as well as in private the trying of the
experiment, although I have not as much confidence as many of my friends in its
29
442 International Council of Women.
power to eradicate the great evils of the day. The Government of the United States
ought either to free women from paying tax or else give them the vote. Wish I
could accept your invitation to attend your National Council and hear the great
womanly leaders, but I must be elsewhere.
May you always dwell in the light.
Yours, truly, T. De Witt Talmage.
Portland, Oregon, March 22, 1888.
My Dear Miss Anthony: Although compelled, at the last moment, to forego the
long-anticipated pleasure of meeting the International Council of Women in person,
I cheerfully unpack my trunk and resume my home duties, content to meet you all
in spirit, and in that way engage in the deliberations of the most remarkable assem-
blage of my sex yet known to history. My heart throbs with quiet happiness, as,
from my window looking out upon Mount Hood, with the ethereal blue of heaven
bending to the eastward from above and around it, I think of the many members
of the Council to whom I send greeting.
From the programme before me, I judge that every other question will be amply
considered by the Council except the one left to me, to wit, " Suffrage in the Terri-
tories;" therefore I wish to say to your brilliant convocation from America and over
the seas, that the women of the Territories are moving steadily toward the goal of
liberty which the ballot alone can guarantee to any people.
In Washington Territory, where the suffrage was granted them by legislative
enactment in 1883, and overthrown by judicial interference in 1887, the right was
chivalrously restored to them in 1888 by legislative re-enactment in the face of the
bitterest opposition ever yet encountered by equal suffragists anywhere.
In Idaho and Montana, woman-suffrage sentiment is rapidly spreading among the
people as a result of the successful experiment in Wyoming and Washington Terri-
tories. It has already permeated every avenue of political thought, and that, too,
without provoking serious or organized opposition from any quarter. In Arizona
and New Mexico the question has thus far received comparatively little attention;
but quiet preparations are in progress for effective work in those Territories, which
will be openly and actively begun, as soon as the present plans can be completed for
placing Idaho and Montana on an equal footing with Wyoming and Washington.
Please say to the Council, including all the distinguished women from organiza-
tions not yet committed to the idea of equal suffrage, that the men of the Territories,
as a rule, are more generally imbued with the spirit and fact of liberty than those
of older and more settled governments. Their conception of woman and her sphere
has been enlarged by multiplied opportunities to behold her power as a helpmate for
man, which, in a new country, is always expanding under the most trying circum-
stances.
The new country has ever been the cradle of liberty, and nowhere is this fact more
vividly illustrated than in the Territories of America, wherein woman has been
crowned as a sovereign citizen and openly acknowledged as the peer of her son,
brother, husband, and father, to whose gallantry, chivalry, and liberty-loving mag-
nanimity she is proud to be indebted for her present freedom.
Yours, for universal liberty, Abigail Scott Duniway.
New York, March 17, 1888.
My Dear Miss Anthony : The deep interest that I have always felt in the or-
ganization of our country's progressive women, and which I especially take in this
Letters. 443
International Council and the memorable anniversary it celebrates, made me eager
to accept your invitation to contribute what I could to the discussions of its sessions.
The place on your programme, which I accepted with gratification and pride, I
now relinquish with an equal measure of regret, because those same industrial oc-
cupations which I hoped to have the honor of discussing at your Wednesday morning
session have not left me a moment's time to prepare, with credit to you or to my-
self, for what would have been so pleasant a duty.
The age in which it is our privilege to live has been remarkable for progress along
many lines, but in nothing has there been more notable advance than in the popular
recognition of the rights of woman, and the popular appreciation of her efforts for
her deliverance from effete limitations. "Woman is to-day a controlling factor in the
life of every Christian people. The world acknowledges, even if it does not em-
body in statutes, her sovereignty. It recognizes the possibilities which inhere in
her nature, and it is opening on every side doors long shut and barred against her.
She is making herself felt in its industries. She is the soul of its philanthropies.
It is her touch that softens the asperities of prison administration, and her gentle
ministrations lighten the pain and weariness of the hospital. It is her earnest faith
that makes even the exile of the mission field a place of joy and triumph. In the
grand moral controversies of the time — involving temperance, the purity of the
individual and tbe home, the protection of childhood — woman occupies a foremost
place. In literature and art and in education, how important is the relation which
she holds to the happiness of mankind !
But there is much yet to do in this grand work of woman's protection against the
prejudice and rapacity which still harbor in little minds. Her industrial equality is
not yet fully established. Unjust legal prohibitions prevent the utmost assertion of
her ability. She is still denied access to spheres of usefulness in which she might
achieve new and grander triumphs. But I can not doubt but that all this will be
changed as the years go on. Truth makes her way slowly, it may be, but surely,
because the eternities are hers. Agitation, discussion, conflict — out of these what-
ever is true and vital comes at last.
With my excuses and regrets, I am sure you will accept my heartfelt and most
earnest wishes for the triumphant prosperity of the Woman's Association and of its
cause in every land. Promise of this is indeed given by the splendid array of names
on your programme for the sessions of the week — names which fully reassure me,
in the unavoidable withdrawal of my own, standing as they do in the light of the
not unrewarded work of nobly-spent years.
Faithfully yours, Frank Leslie.
Bange, Maine et Loire, France, March 5, 1888.
To the International Council of Women — Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President :
It is certain that such great meetings of women of all lands working for the eleva-
tion and enfranchisement of their sex can not fail to have a good result.
The progress made by the movement for the emancipation of women in America
and England is an encouragement to us in our struggle against the prejudices which
still surround us, and which we find it difficult to uproot in our old continent.
In France, the number of women interested in this question is unfortunately
small, and the number of those who have the courage of their opinions and are not
afraid of compromising their interests by speaking openly, is still smaller. * * *
444 International Council of Women.
The active propagation of the ideas of equity and justice, which will elevate woman
to her proper position in the family and society, striven for so intelligently and
valiantly by the dauntless women of the United States and of England, interests
me greatly. The enfranchisement of woman is the chief aim of my life. To all
those with whom I have so long lived in mind and heart, to whom I am personally
unknown, let me send my best wishes for the complete success of their persevering
efforts.
Accept, madame, my most sincere regards and cordial sympathy,
M. DuPUIS-VlNCENT,
One of the Organizers of the Society for the Amelioration of Woman's Condition,
Founded 1869; One of the Organizers of the French Union for Woman's Rights;
Working Member of the British and Continental Federation; Member of the In-
ternational Association of the Friends of Young Women; Contributing Member
of Manchester National Society for Women's Suffrage; Member of the League for
the Protection of Women; Member of the Federation of Women.
Society for the Amelioration of the Condition
of Women and the Claiming of their Rights,
Office, Rue Cardinet 72, Paris, March 6, 1888.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President of the International Council of Women at
Washington :
Sisters of America : We send you our cordial and fraternal greeting. We
have read with deep interest of your project of holding an International Council
of Women, the programme of which includes the examination of the laws and
institutions which govern the condition of women.
In every nation, even the most civilized, there exist still for women special laws
which bear the imprint of semi-civilization. But although held in a state of sec-
ular ignorance, woman has set herself to noble undertakings, in which she proves
herself possessed of faculties and aptitudes equal to, if not identical with, those
of the other sex.
Science, especially in the department of anthropology, daily throws new light
upon this important question. Law alone remains almost unchanged in the midst of
all these changes and advancements. At this present time there are laws which
injure women in the very points on which their originators intended to benefit them.
The female sex is placed in law with incompetents, insane, idiots, and criminals.
Such laws are at once a denial of justice and a contradiction of the mission of
woman. They contain a malicious attack upon her moral character, her dignity,
and her material interests.
The inferiority, created and legalized by the laws of so many nations, has been
to women a crushing and humiliating yoke, which has blinded the moral perception
of man and the intellect of woman. To enlighten the world on this great question
which touches one-half of the human race, this is to dry up the source of the
greater part of the evils which afflict society; this is to work for moral elevation;
this is to reestablish, on an unchanging foundation, the reign of justice; this is to
assure the happiness of generations present and to come.
M. Griess-Trant, Maria Deraismes, President.
Louise David, Vice-Presidents.
40 University Road, Belfast, Ireland, December 3, 1887.
Dear Miss Foster: It is quite out of my power to accept your invitation to at-
tend the great gathering of women in Washington in March. I regret it deeply,
Letters. 445
for my special sphere is certainly different from that of any other delegate you are
likely to have, and I should have been glad to have given some account of what we
Ulster women have done in the last twenty years. We have, of course, joined in
the general agitations of our sisters in Great Britain for women's suffrage, for the
reform of the married women's property-law, for the repeal of the Contagious Dis-
eases Acts, for the founding of university examinations for women, and eventually
of their admission to university degrees. But we have some points of interest spe-
cial to ourselves. You may not be aware that the very first woman who ever spoke
in public on behalf of temperance in Europe, was an Ulster woman, Mrs. Carlile,
the founder of Bands of Hope. From that time, fifty years ago, till the present,
we have had an exceptionally high place in the temperance cause. The Women's
Temperance Association of Belfast, founded by my gifted friend, Mrs. Byers, of the
Victoria College (who finds it no hindrance to leading the van in the cause of
women's education, to be also a leader in philanthropy), has many branches through-
out Ulster, and a membership of about 27,000. Very nearly the same ladies are
engaged, in many different ways, in the defense of young girls, and the rescue of
children from moral danger.
In educational matters we have one considerable advantage — in the absolute
equality of position and rewards for boys and for girls, in the intermediate examina-
tions in Ireland. The credit of getting this equality secured, while the bill creating
this scheme was passing through Parliament in 1878, belongs in large measure to
the Belfast Ladies' Institute, of which I was then honorable secretary. This scheme
has greatly enlarged the opportunities for girls to prepare in time for the degree
examinations of the Royal University and others. Just now we are specially grat-
ified by our success in obtaining the municipal suffrage for women in Belfast, during
the late session of Parliament. Our North of Ireland Women's Suffrage Committee,
would very gladly have promoted a bill giving the right to women in all Irish
towns, but tbere was no means of doing so. All that was in our power was to get
a women's clause introduced in a local Belfast bill. There is no doubt, however,
that our possession of this franchise, will stimulate women in other towns to care
more strongly. The first elections under the new act took place on the 25th of
November, and women voted in large numbers, making temperance a very promi-
nent object in their choice of candidates.
I take for granted that you are receiving similar information in regard to Dublin
from Mrs. Haslam, the indefatigable honorable secretary of the Women's Suffrage
Committee there.
If my health permitted I would willingly give you a more detailed account of our
work. I do think it has been rather remarkably successful. A well-known Scotch
M. P., who is an opponent of women's suffrage, and many other things that I care
for, said to me, after visiting through the eastern counties of Ulster, " You have
been extraordinarily successful in inculcating suffrage doctrines! One meets edu-
cated men and women everywhere who hold them; but this is the first time in my
life that I have been ' heckled ' on the subject by farmers, and artisans, and day-
laborers!"
I trust you will have a very good meeting; and I am sure, if I were well enough
to call our committee together, that they would authorize me to send you their good
wishes as well as my own. Yours truly, Isabella M. S. Tod.
Paris, March 15.
Dear Miss Anthony: Much interest is taken here in the reform circles, in your
446 International Council of Women.
great Council. Let me give you one example. M. Guyot, one of the leading repub-
lican deputies, wrote me a few days ago asking for documents concerning your
Council. I sent him what I had, and night before last he delivered a very interest-
ing lecture on the woman question, in which the United States were highly
praised.
There is no great progress to be reported from this country in this matter of
emancipation of women. Public opinion, however, is being educated by such
lectures as these by M. Guyot, and nobody can tell what the result may be.
When it is remembered that the French have a way of doing things "with a
rush," you can not say what may not happen. Universal male suffrage was
decreed in a night, and, it may be, in a burst of enthusiasm, in the midst of
some great social and political revolution like that of 1848. women, too, may be
given their political and legal rights. Alexandre Dumas said some time ago that
women would vote in France within ten years. He may be right.
Very truly yours, Theodore Stanton.
London, March 18, 1888.
My Dear Miss Anthony: It is with a feeling of deep regret that I am obliged
to say "no" to your most kind invitation to be present at the International
Council of Women to be held at Washington the last days of this month. It
will be a most interesting and ever-memorable gathering. I shall be with you
in spirit although it is beyond my power to be with you in person.
I think, politically, we are making great way in England. The Women's Liberal
Associations are becoming a powerful organization in the country, and numbers
more than 16,000 members at the present moment. In this district, for instance,
we form the fifth ward to the Men's Association, and we send seven members to
the executive committee. Within the last few days this executive has, among
others, appointed V. R. Bates (a niece of Sir Roland Hill's) and myself, as two of
its representatives on the council of the Liberal and Radical Unions, and myself into
its general committee. These are the first appointments of the kind that have been
made. The L. and R. Union is the central organization of all the Liberal and
Radical associations in London. Now two ladies, at all events, will have a voice in
the business transactions of this body. Are we, in England, or you, in America,
nearest the goal, I wonder?
With kindest regards, and hopiag that I may have the pleasure of meeting you
again at no distant date, believe me,
Yours sincerely, Jane Cobden.
REPORT OF THE
COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS.
The Committee of Arrangements* for the International Council of Women
was appointed by the Executive Committee of the National Woman Suffrage
Association at its Nineteenth Annual Convention, held in Washington, Jan-
uary, 1887. The Committee held its first meeting in Philadelphia early in
February, at which the work was planned. June 1, the Calif was issued
accompanied by an Appeal for funds. During July and August the
greater part of the Official Invitations were sent out to the Associations
selected as being of either national scope or national value. Invitations
(official) were also extended to a number of women, who, as individuals,
were considered representative of lines of work not yet organized.
The complete list of associations invited includes, in addition to those
accepting. £ the following:
Association of Collegiate Alumnae.
Society to Encourage Studies at Home.
Society for Collegiate Instruction of Women.
Women's State Fair Association (Indiana).
British National Society for Women's Suffrage.
Somerset Club (London).
Primrose League (England).
Society for Higher Education (England).
German Women's Union (represented by letters, page 219).
Canadian Woman Skkkkaok Association.
Order of the Eastern Star (Freemasons).
Daughters ok REBEKAB (Odd Fellows).
Baptist Women's Missionary Societies (Home and Foreign).
Methodist Women's Missionary Societies (Home and Foreign).
Congregational Women's Missionary Societies (Home and Foreign).
Protestant Episcopal Women's Missionary Societies (Home and Foreign).
Society for the Amelioration of the Condition of Women and the Claim-
ing of their HionTs (represented by letter, page 444).
League for the Protection of Women (France).
International Union of the Friends of Young Girls (France).
Work in the Protestant Prisons (France).
Society of Associated Schools (Copenhagen).
Political Club (Copenhagen).
Women's Reading Clubs (Denmark).
Students' Association (Denmark).
Early in December the Committee met in Indianapolis and the general
*See names of Committee appended to Call, page 11.
+See pages 10, 11.
*See list, pages 49, 50, and errata, page 8 .
448 International Council of Women.
programme of the proceedings was there outlined. The months intervening
between this meeting and March 25, were devoted to correspondence with the
delegates and official guests, in relation to their topics, time, and position
upon the programme. Miss Anthony went to Washington in January,
where she was joined in February by Miss Foster, the headquarters of the
Council being the Riggs House. March 10, it was decided, after corre-
spondence with Mrs. Clara B. Colby, to issue the Woman's Tribune daily
during the Council, and announcement of this was accordingly made.
The Delegates were requested to meet with the Committee of Arrange-
ments the afternoon of Saturday, March 24, in the Red Parlor of the Riggs
House. At 3 P. M. they were called to order by Miss Anthony, chairman
of the Committee of Arrangements. Of the forty-eight duly accredited Del-
egates a majority were present. After the preliminary business, Mrs. Sewall,
at the request of the Chairman, stated briefly her plan of forming, as a
fitting result of the present Council, two permanent organizations, National
and International, which should make possible, at regular intervals, rep-
resentative meetings of the same character. Mrs. Sewall then moved : That a
committee be appointed to consider the question of National and Inter-
national Councils, and to report to the Delegates a basis of organization.
In the discussion of the question, the following persons participated :
Frances E.Willard, Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, EdnahD. Cheney,
Lucy Stone, Mary F. Eastman, Rev. Ada C. Bowles, Alice Scatcherd, Alex-
andra Gripenberg, Hannah Whitall Smith, Lita Barney Sayles, Rev. An-
toinette B. Blackwell, May Wright Sewall, and Rachel Foster. Mrs. Sew-
all's motion was passed, and it was further decided that the committee should
consist of fifteen persons appointed by the chair, and that it be pre-
pared to report to a Delegate Meeting on Saturday afternoon, March 31.*
The Committee on Organization was authorized to appoint a Committee
of nine on Nominations, said committee to report only in case the Dele-
gates' meeting should decide to organize the permanent councils. After
some discussion, but no further official action, the meeting adjourned.
The Committee on Organization met Tuesday, March 27, at 9 A. M.
After discussion, a resolution in favor of the formation of a National and an
International Council was passed. Miss Willard presented an outline of con-
stitutions for the two councils which was referred to a sub-committee of three:
Miss Willard, Miss Eastman, and Mrs. Sewall. A Committee on Nomina-
tions was nominated from the floor: Chairman, Clara Barton; M. Louise
Thomas, Mary F. Eastman, May Wright Sewall, Leonora M. Barry, Clara
Cleghorne Hoffman, Frances E. Willard, Ada C. Bowles, Rachel G. Foster.
It was moved that Miss Willard, as chairman of the Committee on Organi-
zation, request Miss Anthony to call a meeting of the Delegates, at the ad-
journment of the public session that morning, that this committee might ask
* See names of Committee, page 50.
Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 449
the power to add the foreign Delegates to the Committee for the nomina-
tion of officers for the International Council. Adjourned.
The second Delegates' Meeting took place on the platform of Albaugh's
Opera House at the close of the public session of Tuesday morning, March
27. A quorum having been secured, Miss Anthony called the meeting to
order. Miss Willard presented the request of the Committee on Organiza-
tion, which was unanimously approved ; after which the meeting adjourned.*
Wednesday, March 28, the Committee on Organization met at 9 A. M.,
when a draft of preamble and constitutions was presented, discussed, and
referred again to the Sub-committee on Constitution. Adjourned.
At one o'clock of Wednesday the Committee on Nominations met in the
private dining-room of the Riggs House. Officers were first nominated for
the proposed International Council. This done, the foreign delegates with-
drew, and the home delegates nominated the officers for a National
Council of the United States. Adjourned.
Saturday, March 31, at 9 A. M., the Committee on Organization met
and adopted the report of the Sub-committee on Constitution.
Saturday, March 31, at 3 P. M., in the Red Parlor of the Riggs House,
the third Delegates' Meeting convened. Miss Willard, chairman of the
Committee on Basis of Organization, read the following report :
Mindful of the high duties entrusted to its care, your Committee lias earnestly
addressed itself to the problem of a National and an International Council of
Women — first, as to the practicability of forming two such great organizations, in
which should be included the organized working forces of the world's womanhood'
and, secondly, as to their object and method.
As a result of our deliberations, we respectfully report:
First. We [Mrs. Scatclierd dissenting as to the International] are strongly in favor
of such a fv. deration — National and International — believing that it will incalculably
increase the world's sum total of womanly courage, efficiency, and esprit de corps ;
that it will V iden our horizon, correct the tendency to an exaggerated impression of
one's own work as compared with that of others, and put the wisdom and experience
of each at the service of all.
Secondly. We suggest that the form of organization be the simplest possible,
following the general plan of the present Council, and to this end we offer forms of
Constitution, adapted to a National and to an International Council of Women.
Chairman, Frances E. Willard; Victoria Richardson, Ada C. Bowles, M.
Louise Thomas, Clara Barton, Mary F. Eastman, May Wright Sewall,
Martha R. Field, Bessie Starr Reefer, Alice Scatcherd, Isabelle Boge-
lot, Laura Ormiston Chant, S. Magelsson Groth, Alexandra Gripenberg;
Secretary, Rachel G. Foster.
The constitutions which follow were read as a whole. f It was then
*The persons added were : Alice Scatcherd, Laura Ormiston Chant, and Mrs. Ashton Dilke,
England ; S. Magelsson Groth, Norway; Alexandra Gripenberg, Finland ; Mrs. McDonell
and Bessie Starr Keefer, Canada; Zadel Barnes Gustafson, England; Isabelle Bogelot, France.
t During the discussion of the report of the Committee on Organization, Mrs. Alice Scatch-
erd and Mrs. Ashton Dilke requested leave to withdraw, as they did not desire to assume any
responsibility in the formation of the International Council.
450 International Council of Women.
moved and carried to act upon the preamble and articles seriatim, as also
upon the recommendations. They were adopted as reported by the com-
mittee, with the exception of the change of the word "biennial" to " tri-
ennial," in Articles IV., V., and VI. , of the National Constitution, and
of the word "quadrennial" to "quintennial," in the corresponding articles
of the Constitution of the International Council.
Constitution of the
WOMAN'S NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE UNITED STATES,
Organized at Washington, D. O, March 31, 1888.
PREAMBLE.
We, women of the United States, sincerely believing that the hest good of our
homes and nation will be advanced by our own greater unity of thought, sympathy
and purpose, and that an organized movement of women will best conserve the
highest good of the family and the State, do hereby band ourselves together in a
confederation of workers committed to the overthrow of all forms of ignorance and
injustice, and to the application of the Golden Rule to society,, custom, and law.
That we may more successfully prosecute the work, we adopt the following
CONSTITUTION.
Article I.
Name.
This federation shall be called the Woman's National Council of the United
States.
Article II.
General Policy.
This Council is organized in the interest of no one propaganda, and has no power
over its auxiliaries beyond that of suggestion and sympathy; therefore, no society
voting to become auxiliary to this Council, shall thereby render itself liable to be
interfered with in respect to its complete organic unity, independence, or methods
of work, or be committed to any principle or method of any other society or to any
utterance or act of the Council itself, beyond compliance with the terms of this
Constitution.
Article III.
Officers.
The officers shall be a President, Vice-President at Large, Corresponding Secre-
tary, Recording Secretary, and Treasurer. Each president of an auxiliary society
shall be ex-officio vice-president of the National Council, and the President of the
National Council shall be ex-officio Vice-President of the International Council.
The five general officers, with the Vice-Presidents, shall constitute an Executive
Committee, of which seven members shall make a quorum, to control and provide
for the general interests of the Council.
Article IV.
Auxiliaries.
Any society of women, the nature of whose work is satisfactory to the Executive
Committee, either as to its undoubtedly national character or national value, may
become auxiliary to this Council by its own vote and by the payment of a sum
amounting to half a cent yearly per member, in addition to a payment of twenty-five
dollars, into the treasury of the National Council not later than three months prior
to its triennial meetings.
Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 451
Article "V.
Meetings.
The National Council shall hold triennial meetings. The Committee of Arrange-
ments shall be composed of the Executive Committee and one delegate chosen by
each auxiliary society as its representative.
Article VI.
This Constitution may be altered or amended by a majority vote of the Council
at any triennial meeting, printed notice thereof having been sent to each member
of the Executive Committee at least three months prior to such meeting.
Constitution of the
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN,
Organized at Washington, D. C, United States of America,
March 31, 1888.
PREAMBLE.
We, women of All Nations, sincerely believing that the best good of humanity
will be advanced by greater unity of thought, sympathy, and purpose, and that an
organized movement of women will best conserve the highest good of the family
and the State, do hereby band ourselves together in a confederation of workers com-
mitted to the overthrow of all forms of ignorance and injustice, and to the applica-
tion of the Golden Rule to society, custom, and law.
That we may more successfully prosecute the work, we adopt the following
CONSTITUTION.
Article I.
Name.
This federation shall be called the International CounciLof Women.
Article II.
General Policy.
This International Council is organized in the interest of no one propaganda, and
has no power over its auxiliaries beyond that of suggestion and sympathy; there-
fore, no National Council voting to become auxiliary to the International, shall
thereby render itself liable to be interfered with in respect to its complete organic
unity, independence, or methods of work, or shall be committed to any principle or
method of any other Council, or to any utterance or act of this International Council,
beyond compliance with the terms of this Constitution.
Article III.
Officers.
The officers shall be a President, Vice-President at Large, Corresponding Secre-
tary, Recording Secretary, and Treasurer. Each President of a National Council
shall be ex-officio Vice-President of the International Council.
The five general officers, with the Vice-Presidents, shall constitute an Executive
Committee, of which seven members shall make a quorum, to control and provide
for the general interests of the International Council.
Article IV.
Auxiliaries.
Any National Council may become auxiliary to the International Council by its
452 International Council of Women.
own vote and by the payment of one hundred dollars every five years. This sum
shall be paid into the treasury of the International Council not later than three
months prior to its quintennial meetings.
Article V.
Meetings.
The International Council shall hold quintennial meetings. The Committee of
Arrangements shall be composed of the Executive Committee and one delegate from
each National Council.
Article VI.
This Constitution maybe altered or amended by a majority vote of the Council at
any quintennial meeting, printed notice thereof having been sent to each member of
the Executive Committee at least three months prior to such meeting.
RECOMMENDATIONS.*
First. That the general officers of the National Council be instructed to issue
an address at once, to the women of the United States setting forth the objects of this
new organization.
Second. That the general officers of each association secure, if possible, a letter
of approval of the organization, signed by representative women of all countries,
urging the co-operation of all women, irrespective of race or creed, to be used in
connection with the official address.
Third. That the general officers of both National and International Councils be
instructed to enact by-laws for their guidance, which shall be valid until the first
regular meeting of each council shall be held: Provided, That no By-law shall be
passed which is not in exact accord with the Constitution.
Fourth. That a clause be inserted into either the Constitution or By-laws, pro-
viding that no person shall occupy the office of President two consecutive terms.
Unanimously adopted.
After the adoption of these constitutions Miss B-irton, as chairman of the
Committee on Nominations, brought in her report. The vote was taken by
ballot, separately, upon the officers of each Council. The result was the
election of the tickets reported by the committee, as follows :
OFFICERS OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL.
President :
Frances E. Willard, Illinois.
Evanston.
Vice-President-at-Large :
Susan B. Anthony, New York.
Rochester,
Corresponding Secretary :
Mat Wright Sewali,, Indiana.
343 North Pennsylvania Street, Indianapolis.
Recording Secretary :
Mary F. Eastman, Massachusetts.
Tewksbury.
Treasurer :
M. Louise Thomas, New York.
Thomas Avenue. Fordham.
* These recommendations refer to both organizations.
Report of the Committee' of Arrangements. 453
OFFICERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL.
President :
Millicext Garrett Fawcett, England.
2 Gower Street, London.
Vice-President-at-Large :
Clara Barton, America.
Washington, J). G.
Corresponding Secretary :
Rachel G. Foster, America.
748 N. Nineteenth Street, Philadelphia.
Recording Secretary :
Kirstine Frederiksen, Denmark.
4 Kastaniewej , Copenhagen.
Treasurer :
Isabelle Bogelot, France.
4 Rue Ferrault, Paris.
A committee was appointed to prepare a letter to be given to the press as
the expression of this Council, said committee to report to the next meet-
ing. Adjourned.
The fourth Delegates' Meeting (thirty present) convened at the Riggs
House Monday afternoon, April 2, Miss Anthony presiding. Miss Willard,
as chairman of the committee, presented the report on Official Letter of the
Council. The report produced an animated discussion, in which almost
every person present took part. It was finally decided, by a vote of 21 to 7,
to appoint a new committee (Miss Willard, being about to leave the city,
could not serve further) to draft a brief official statement of the points
upon which the Council was one in sentiment. This committee consisted
of Mrs. Sewall, Miss Eastman, and Miss Foster. It was agreed that when
the meeting adjourned it should be to convene Tuesday, April 3, at 9 A. M.,
to receive their report.
A resolution was passed authorizing the Secretary to forward a letter of
appreciation to the various foreign associations which had sent delegates to
the Council ; also a letter, accompanied by the report, to every female sover-
eign (reigning or consort) in all the countries of the world, expressing pleas-
ure in their delegates, or regret that none had been sent. The Secretary was
also authorized to send cablegrams of greeting from the Council to Presi-
dent and Madam Carnot, France ; Victoria, Empress of Germany ; the
Crown Princess of Denmark ; Mrs. Priscilla Bright McClaren, Mrs. Jose-
phine Butler, Mrs. Jacob Bright, and Mrs. Elmy, of England.
A most cordial expression of thanks was passed by a rising vote to Mr.
and Mrs. C. W. Spofford for their exceeding kindness and hospitality to all
the members of the Council, and a committee — consisting of Mrs. Stanton,
Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, and Miss Foster — was appointed to arrange a tes-
454 International Council of Women.
timonial to be presented to Mrs. Spofford on behalf of the delegates.* A
vote of thanks was passed to the Committee of Arrangements. Adjourned.
The fifth and final Meeting of the Delegates was held at 9 A. M., Tuesday,
April 3, Miss Anthony in the chair. The report of the committee was pre-
sented by Mrs. Sevvall.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL.
The International Council of "Women, in session in the city of Washington from
March 25 to April 1, inclusive, in closing makes public announcement that fifty-
three t different organizations of women have been represented on its platform by
eighty speakers and forty-nine delegates from England, France, Norway, Denmark,
Finland, India, Canada, and the United States. All of these organizations but four
are of national scope, and these are of national value. The subjects of Education,
Philanthropies, Temperance, Industries, Professions, Organization, Legal Condi-
tions, Social Purity, Political Conditions, and Religion have been discussed. While
no restriction has been placed upon the fullest expression of the most widely diverg-
ent views upon these vital questions of the age, it is cause for rejoicing that the ses-
sions, both executive and public, have been absolutely without friction.
It is the unanimous voice of the Council ; that all institutions of learning and of
professional instruction, including schools of theology, law, and medicine, should,
in the interests of humanity, be as freely opened to women as to men; that oppor-
tunities for industrial training should be as generally and liberally provided for one
sex as for the other, and the representatives of organized womanhood in this Coun-
cil will steadily demand that in all avocations in which both men and women engage
equal wages shall be paid for equal work; and, finally, that an enlightened society
should demand, as the only adequate expression of the high civilization which it is
its office to establish and maintain, an identical standard of personal purity and
morality for men and women.
This report was unanimously accepted and the Secretary directed to give
it to the press and have it printed for circulation. Adjourned.
A reference to some of the details of the management may serve to give an
idea of the magnitude of the work. \ By appointment of the chairman of the
*The result of the Committee's consultation was the presentation to Mrs. Spofford of a gold
monogram pin— I. C. W.— and a handsomely-framed photographic group of the members of
the Council. Mrs. Spofford desires the Secretary to convey to the delegates her thanks for
these pleasant souvenirs of that, to her, delightful occasion.
tSee pages 49 and 50. This list should contain also, as 52, the New England Hospital for
Women and Children— Delegate, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney— and the fifty-third is the National
Woman Suffrage Association.
X The magnitude of the work of the Council may be better appreciated by a mention of a few
figures in this connection. There were printed and distributed by mail 10,000 Calls (four pages
each) ; 10,000 Appeals (two pages each) ; sketches were prepared of the lives and work of
a number of the delegates and circulated by means of a Press Committee of over ninety
persons in various cities of many States. March 10, the first edition (5,000) of the sixteen-
page programme was issued ; this was followed by five other editions of 5,000 each and
a final, seventh edition of 7,000 copies. Each edition required revision and the introduction of
slight changes made necessary by changing conditions in the meeting. There were written in
connection with the preparations about 4,000 letters. Including those concerning railroad
rates, there were not less than 10,000 more circulars of various kinds printed and distributed.
A low estimate of the number of pages thus issued (circulars, calls, programmes, etc.) gives
672,000. During the week of the Council and the Convention of the N. W. S. A. (April 3 and
4) the Woman's Tribune was published eight times (four days 16 pages ; four days 12 pages),
the daily edition averaging 12,500 copies. {See note continued on opposite page.)
Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 455
Committee of Arrangements, Mrs. Helen M. Gougar was, in December, 1887,
made chairman of the Committee on Railroads. That this work was well
done, the many visitors to the Council from^all parts of the country, who
enjoyed the benefit of the reduction secured, can testify. The death of a
near relative summoned Mrs. Gougar from Washington to her home in
Indiana, a few days before the Council opened. Her work was left with
Miss Lucy E. Anthony, who took entire and efficient charge of this depart-
ment during the Council and the Convention of the National Woman Suf-
frage Association which followed it.
The Committee on Hotels and Boarding Places, of which Mrs. Mary S.
Lockwood was chairman, had a necessary and very thankless share of the
Council work. Fully a month before the meetings opened, Mrs. Lock-
wood's correspondence began to increase and inquiries concerning accom-
modations poured in upon her. During the Council, and for several days
preceding it, some member of this committee was on duty during the entire
day in Parlor 41, Riggs House.
The almost Herculean task which Mrs. Colby undertook, single-handed,
in editing the daily Woman s Tribune, can be appreciated by no one outside
of the few who were attending constantly to the Council machinery. For-
tunately the editor found an able helper in Mrs. Elvira Bushnell, of Cleve-
land, who, though she had come to attend the Council, relinquished the
pleasure for the work and devoted all her days to aiding Mrs. Colby in her
undertaking.
In securing Miss Mary F. Seymour, of New York, to take charge of the sten-
ographic report, the Committee of Arrangements builded better than they
knew. Her work should forever silence those who deny to women the pos-
session of executive ability. With the cool head and practical hand of a
veteran, she organized and trained in a few days a new corps of assistants,
reduced the details of her work to a perfect system, and in fact managed the
stupendous enterprise of furnishing daily verbatim reports of the addresses,
not only to the Woman's Tribune, but to many representatives of the press,
with a success, if not unparalleled, at least unexcelled. It was Miss Seymour's
original intention to take stenographic notes herself, assisted by Miss E.
The receipts from contributions and memberships were in round numbers $5,000 ; from sale
of seats and boxes at opera-house $5,000, ana from sale of daily Woman's Tribune, photo-
graphs and badges, collection, advertisements, etc., $1,500, making a total of nearly $12,000.
The largest sums were from Julia T. Foster, $400 ; Elizabeth Thompson, $250 ; Mrs. Leland
Stanford, $200 ; Rachel G. Foster, $200 ; and $100 each from Adeline Thomson, Ellen Clark
Sargent, Emma J. Bartol, Margaret Caine, Sarah Knox Goodrich, Mary Hamilton Williams,
Lucy W. Curtis, Mary Gray Dow, Jane S. Richards, George W. Childs, and Henry C. Parsons.
The cost of the Tribune (printing, stenographic report, mailing, etc.) was over $3,600 ; hall
rent, $1,800. When one considers the entertainment of so many officers, speakers and dele-
gates, printing, postage, the salary of one clerk for a year (whose board was a contribution
from Miss Adeline Thomson and Miss Julia Foster, of Philadelphia), and the thousand etceteras
of such a meeting, the total cost of $10,000 is not surprising. An international convention of
men, held in Washington within a year, cost in round numbers $50,000 !
456 International Council of Women.
Parsons, another expert reporter ; but soon after her arrival it was found
that the management alone required her entire attention ; she therefore tel-
egraphed for Mrs. E. F. Pettingill to take her place at the reporters' table. Of
the skillful work done by these ladies, Miss Seymour speaks in the highest
terms.*
The decorations of the auditorium at Albaugh's Opera House were under
the superintendence of Mrs. Jane H. Spofford, who spared neither time nor
pains to have them tasteful and appropriate. f To Mrs. Spofford, as an
officer of the National Woman Suffrage Association and a member of the
Committee of Arrangements, was due a large share of the success of the
Council.
eo]vi]vii'i"i'EEs5 of tfjiE eotWeiL.
COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS (Badge, Black and Gold.)
General Officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, RACHEL G. FOSTER,
President. Cor. Sec.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, JANE H. SPOFFORD,
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Treasurer.
Vice-Presidents at Large. ELLEN H. SHELDON,
MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, ' Pec. Sec.
Chairman Ex. Com.
RAILROADS (Badge, Purple).
HELEN M. GOUGAR, Chairman. LUCY E. ANTHONY.
HOTELS AND BOARDING PLACES (Badge, Mahogany).
Chairman, MARY S. LOCK WOOD. GEORGIE SNOW.
SALLIE M. R[XFORD. HANNAH B. SPERRY.
MARY E. MCPHERSON. EMILY F. HORT.
ENROLLMENT OF VISITORS (Badge, Light Blue).
Chairman, HARRIET PURVIS. ELLA WISE.
MARY S. ANTHONY. LAURA M. JOHNS.
JULIA T. FOSTER.
DECORATION (Badge, Lavender).
Chairman, MARY NASON. JANE H. SPOFFORD.
BADGES (Badge, Pink).
Chairman, RACHEL G. FOSTER. LUCY E. ANTHONY.
PRESS (Badge, Red and Gold).
Chairman, RACHEL G. FOSTER. ELLEN H. SHELDON.
^ , TUNIE H SYMONDS, Press Agent. 1IARRIETTE R. SHATTUCK.
HANNAH B. SPERRY.
PUBLIC RECEPTION (Badge, Dark Blue).
Chairman, JANE H. SPOFFORD. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL.
tDa ' LAURA M. JOHNS. MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE
CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS.
♦Eleven yeai-s ago Miss Seymour, with no knowledge of sreneral business, began her career
as stenographer. Since that time she has built up the largest stenographic and type-writing
business in the United States, if not in the world. Occupying a representative position her-
self among the skillful short-hand reporters of the country, she has also established a train-
ing school for stenographers and type- writers, which is a model of its kind. Miss Seymour
has this Pamphlet Report of the Council on sale at her office, 38 Park Row, Potter Building.
NeAV York city.
tSee page 30.
Report of the Committee of Arrangements. 457
MUSIC (Badge, Yellow and Brown).
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT. RACHEL G. FOSTER.
MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL.
REPORT OF COUNCIL (Badge, Grey and Gold).
Chairman, CLARA B. COLBY. ANNA L. DIGGS.
LAURA M. JOHNS. ELIZABETH L. SAXON.
SAKAII M. KMITH. HANNAH B. SPERRY.
JULIA AMES. MARY DYE.
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT.
MARY F. SEYMOUR,
Chief of Staff of Official Reporters and Stenographers I. C. W.
Black and Gold, Committee of Arrangements ; Purple, Railroads; Lavender, Decorations;
Light Blue, Enrollment of Visitors ; Dark Blue, Public Reception ; Brown and Gold, Music ; Ma-
hogany and Yellow, Hotels and Boarding Places ; Pink, Badges ; Red and Gold, Press ; Gray and
Gold, Report of Council; White, Delegates to the Council; Green, Official Guests; Yellow, Officer
of the N. W. a. A. ; Red, White, and Blue, Treasurer N. W. 8. A. ; Olive Green, Fraternal Dele-
gates ; Red, Reporters.
The story of the Council would be incomplete without some reference to
the social events of this significant week. The public reception at the Riggs
House* was followed on Sunday evening by an informal gathering in the
Red Parlor, announced as a Service of Song. Between the singing of the
hymns a number of the ladies gave their reasons for the " faith that was
within them" upon the Woman Suffrage question. This was pronounced by
all present an inspiring occasion. It would not be possible to give here in
detail the receptions and meetings of the week. Every hour not occupied
by the sessions of the Council, was filled with social engagements. Mrs.
Louisa Southworth, of Cleveland, received the ladies from Ohio each after-
noon. Mrs. Amanda C. Tiffany, of New York city, invited the ladies of
her State to meet in her private parlor at the Riggs House. Mrs. Shattuck
held a reception in the Red Parlor for the ladies from Massachusetts, and
this example was followed by the daughters of Cassius M. Clay for Kentucky,
and by the visitors from several other States.
The lawyers held meetings, resulting in the formation of a Woman's
International Bar Association. The physicians met at Mrs. Bovee's. The
President of the Western Collegiate Alumnae, Mrs. Stowell, called together
the women especially interested in educational subjects. Enthusiastic mem-
bers of the Ramabai Circles secured a short talk one Sunday afternoon, from
the beloved inspirer of this noble work for the women of India.
Friday, March 30, at 3 P. M., the President and Mrs. Cleveland received
the Council and its visitors. All wore the yellow ribbon — the woman suf-
frage badge — on this occasion, and over fifteen hundred persons called at the
Executive Mansion. Not to be outdone in hospitality, the daughters, grand-
daughters, nieces, and grandnieces of the Pioneers made a social occasion of
the hours immediately following the Pioneers' session of March 31, and the
*See page 23.
. 30
458 International Council of Women.
same afternoon Mrs. Harriet H. Robinson received the factory-girls of Low-
ell, their daughters and friends, and the former contributors to the Lowell
Offering.
On Monday evening, April 2, Senator and Mrs. T. W. Palmer, of Michi-
gan, gave a handsome reception to the Foreign Delegates. Eight hundred
invitations were sent out to the members of the Foreign Legations, prominent
■Government officials, and to the delegates and visitors to the Council, and
more than a thousand persons availed themselves of the occasion to make the
acquaintance of the distinguished foreign guests.
Tuesday afternoon, April 3, Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford, of Cali-
fornia, opened their elegant home to a reception in honor of the Pioneers
in the Woman Suffrage movement. In response to the many cards of
invitation issued, hundreds of people gladly embraced this delightful oppor-
tunity to salute these brave women who have, at such cost to themselves,
broadened and enriched the lives of the women of to-day.
The mallet which was used during the Council was presented to Miss
Anthony by a Southern lady with the following letter :
New Orleans, La., March 19, 1888.
Dear Miss Anthony: Please accept the accompanying mallet, manufactured
from the magnolia of Louisiana swamps, as a token of good will and fellowship
from your Southern sister; and, if not better supplied, do her the honor of using
it at the International Council of Women, over which you are to preside. Trusting
that the results of the International Council may not only strengthen our suffrage
cause, but equal the most sanguine expectations of all of its friends, I herein send
my sincerest and heartiest " God-speed" to the good work.
Yours fraternally, Eliza C. Ferguson.
In addition to letters already mentioned, greetings and regrets have been
received from Mrs. Minna Canth and Mrs. Betty Loefgren, Helsingfors,
Finland j Mrs. Alfhild Agrell, Mrs. Anna Charlotte Edgren-Lemer, and
Prof. Sonja Kowalewski, Stockholm; Miss Alma Akermark, Goteborg,
Sweden ; Mrs. Ragna Neilson and Miss Anna Rogstad, Christiania, Nor-
way; Mrs. Antonie Lceken and Miss Olany Lceken, Throndjem, Norway;
Signora Fanny Zampini Salazaro, Rome ; Dr. Henriette Tiburtius, Berlin ;
Miss Kirstine Frederiksen and Miss Johanna Krebs, Copenhagen ; Isa-
bella O. Ford, Leeds, England ; Mrs. Mentia Taylor, Lady F. W. Harber-
ton, and Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, London ; Miss Eliza Kirkland,
Edinburgh ; Dr. Ewing Whipple, Liverpool ; Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott,
Wisconsin ; Dr. Agnes Kemp, Pennsylvania (absent in Europe); Augusta
Cooper Bristol, New Jersey (absent in California); Dr. Seth and Hannah
Rogers, Connecticut ; Dr. Alida C. Avery, California ; Mrs. Harriet S.
Brooks, Nebraska ; Mrs. Sarah Burger Stearns, Minnesota ; Mrs. Helen M.
Gougar, Indiana ; Mrs. Caroline B. Buell, Illinois.
APPENDIX.
The Christian Woman's Board of Missions* accepted the invi-
tation too late to be given the place upon the programme
which the committee would gladly have accorded its Report.
CHRISTIAN WOMAN'S BOARD OF MISSIONS.
Mrs. Cordie B. Knowles, Delegate.
Emerson says : "America is another name for opportunity. Our whole
history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence in behalf of the
human race." In the opening page of "Our Country" Josiah Strong
writes these words : "There are certain great focal points of history toward
which the lines of past progress have converged, and from which have
radiated the moulding influences of the future." Such will this International
Council be.
I come to you as a delegate from the Christian Woman's Board of Mis-
sions, an incorporated body which raises, controls, and disburses its funds
entirely separate from the societies officered by our brethren, yet in sympa-
thy with their efforts. So well have our ladies managed the.'r finances that
the cost of disbursing its funds, though amounting to many thousands of
dollars annually, has been but one-third of one per cent. Such women as
Eliza Ballou Garfield and Zeralda G. Wallace have given us the influence of
their lives. Our board was organized in 1874. Its headquarters are at
Indianapolis. Its auxiliaries and work extend into every State and Terri-
tory of the Union, to Jamaica, India, and Japan, as it comprises both home
and foreign work. Our local societies enroll nearly 20,000 women, and in
many States we have organizers who labor to rouse the women to show their
faith by their works, by systematic giving for the spread of the Gospel.
Our children, through their work in Mission Bands, are our builders. They
assisted in building the Josephine Smith Memorial Chapel in Japan, raised
the necessary sum to build a bungalow at Bilaspur, India, and this year are
erecting a church at Missoula, Montana.
Miss Mary Greybiel, of Buffalo, N. Y., a young lady of education and
culture, was among the young women who went to India in 1882 as our
Zenana workers. I picked up a Southern paper to-night, and my eye caught
these words: "A nervy woman ; " so I read and found this account of her
work in building the bungalow at Bilaspur. For an English engineer in-
specting it said, " No man could have done better." It appears that she had
to serve as architect, master builder, and general boss mechanic. First she
bought four yoke of buffaloes to do the teaming ; then a few big trees — they
*See page 49.
460 International Council of Women.
are very scarce in that part of the country. She employed a hundred natives,
or nearly that number, whom she taught to quarry stone, which had to be
hauled several miles ; and to make brick, first tramping the clay, fashioning
it into the bricks and then burning them, using the spare portion of the trees
for fuel. The trunks of the trees were laboriously, by hand, sawed into
boards for the floors, roofs, etc. A stone foundation three feet thick was
laid three feet below ground and as much above, this solid base wall being
deemed necessary to keep out white ants, which are a great pest of the coun-
try. Evidently a good job was made of the wall.
The Missionary Tidings is edited and published monthly at Indianapolis
by Mrs. S. E. Shortridge, in the interest of our work. We aim to spread
the pure Gospel of the Son of God, to hasten the time when all shall know
him, from the least to the greatest, rather than to the building up of denomi-
national strongholds; so shall "the kingdoms of this world become the
kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ." Said Dr. Beecher, " In matters
which reach Eternity, now is always the nick of time." Shall we not go to
our homes determined to put into action now the earnest upliftings of
thought we have heard during this Council ?
INDEX.
A.
Abolitionist Society, 259.
Adams, John, 337; John Quincy, 336; George
Francis, 407.
Advancement of Women, Society for, 49, 189,
193,195,218.
Africa. '_>:: I. 235, 429.— North, 260.
Agrell, Mrs. Alfhild, 458.
Akermark, Miss Alma, 458,
Alabama, 131.
Albanese, Professor, 213.
Albaugh's Opera House, 10, 24, 30.
Alexandria, 262.
Allen, Ellen. 13.
Allgemeine Deutsche Frauen Verein, Letter
from the, 219.
Alplia, The, 273.
Alumnae, Association of Collegiate, 50, 57, 1 17.
—Western Collegiate, 12, 49, 72.— Of Michi-
gan University, 80.
America, 9, 112, 113.133, 146,164,160. 173,
182, 192, 208, 287, 241, 246, 255, 266,261,
•Ji;_>. '2Hi», 806, 849, :ns. :ii>4. 399, 426, 429,
, 133, 138. 1 1 2.1 13— South, 262.
American Law tteview, 17s.
American Amendment (see Ked Cross), 104,
1<>5. 108.
American Woman Suffrage Association, 12, 14,
15. tit, 241.
Amelioration of the Condition of Women, So-
ciety for, 144.— Letter of, 11..
Amendments to IVderalConstitution— Twelfth,
8 19 : Thirteenth, 298, 3 19 ; Fourteenth, 349 ;
Fit tenth, 298, 299, 300 ; Proposed Fifteenth,
348.
Ames. Julia, 467.
Anarchists, 164, 136.
Anderson, Dr. Garrett, 383.
Anderson ville, 133.
Anneke, Madame, 868.
Anthony, Lucy B , 165, 150.
Anthony, Mary 8., 17. 15<>.
Anthony, Susan B., Mention of, 9, 10. 11,15,
17. is, 31, :52, 17. 107, ill. 162, 250. 286,
297. 296, 299, 800, 301, 302. 324,325,336,
348,363,354,381,398, lis. 153, 166, 15s.
Antilles. The, 262.
Anti-Slavery, 194.— American Society, 338.
Boston Female Society. 861.— World's Con-
vention, •->!», 8 15. (gee Conventions.)
Antwerp, 200.
Aristotle, lOl.
Archibald, Jane 15.. 17.
Argentine Republic. 1 ,9.
Arrangements, Committee of, 10; Report of,
1 17 15S.
Arnold, Matthew, 437.
Arrest of Women on the Street, 236.
Ashley, llcv., 34, .
Aspasia. ISO.
Associated Schools, Society of (Denmark). 1 17.
Astroem, .Miss Emma. 390.
Auclert, Hubertine. 9, 90; Letter of, 41.
Austin, Dr. Harriet N., 17.
Austria, 153. 259. 421).— Austro-Hungary, 179.
Australia, 183, 429.
Auxerre, Council of, 406.
Avery, Dr. Alida C, 15S.
B.
Backlund, Mrs., 390.
Badges for Council, 157.
Bahia, 262.
Bailey, Dr., 354.
Baltimore. 255.
Bancroft, Prof. Jane H., 166.
Banking Accounts of Women in England, 232.
Baptist Women's Missionary Societies, 447.
1 See Freewill.)
Barner, Miss, 200.
Barker, Mrs. E. Florence, 13, 49.— Address of,
101-103.
Barolong, Tribe, 234, 235.
Bar Association, Woman's International, 1< ,,
179, 157.
Barney, Mrs Susan Hammond, 12, 13, 15, 49,
226 ; Address on Police Matrons, 120-123.
Barrows, Mrs. Isabel C, 13, 49 ; Address, 83-
86.
Barry, Mrs. Leonora M., 14, 50, 145, 162, 163,
1 is ; Address, 1 53-1 50 (See K. of L.)
Barrau, Caroline de, 41, 90.
Bartol, Emma J., 455.
Barton. Clara. 13. is. 49, 50, 133, 184. 351,
352. 1 is ; Address on Ked Cross, 103-107.
Basil. 404.
liastile. The. 145,
liates, Miss V. K.. 146.
Baccini, Ida, 210.
Baccari, Madame G. A., 211.
Balzani, Countess, 209.
liajer, Mr. ITederik, 203,204; Mrs. Mathilde,
203.
Bear, Annette, 291. s
Becker, Miss. 9.
Beecher, Catharine, 337.
Belgium, 161. 254, 257.
Belfast, 9, 1 1 l. 1 15.
Benneson, Cora A.. 12; Address, College Fel-
lowships for Women, 77-80.
Benjamin, Hon. R. M.. 175.
Bennett, Dr. Alice, 172.
Bergen, 203.
Berlin. 220.
Berners, Mr., 9.
Bertani, 213.
Bethel, Mr. Christopher, 234.
Biggs, Caroline A., 9, 41.
Buaspur, 450
Bird, Clementine, 168.
Birney, Mrs. 36 1, 362.
Bittenbender, Mrs. Ada M., 14, 177; Address,
Woman in Law, 173-179.
Bin- Arm, Louise, 42. '
Bicernson, B.jo'rnst.ierne, 205, 280, 281, 393.
Blackwell, Bev. Antoinette Brown, 11. 12, 17,
is. 24, 29, 30, 32, 181, 325, 338, 300, 407,
122; Reminiscences, 340-342; Science and
Religious Truth, 407-4 1 5.
Blackwell, Henry B., 17, 343 ; Reminiscences,
335-339.
Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth, 95, 338, 352.
Blackwell, Dr Emily, 95.
Black List 154, 156.
Blagden, Rev.. 333.
Blair, Senator Henrv P., 1 12, 134 ; Educational
Bill, 128.
462
International Council of Women.
Blake, Mrs. Lillie Devereux, 15, 236 ; Address,
Legal Disabilities, 226-229.
Blatch, Mrs. Harriot Stanton, 9, 43.
Bloomer, Amelia, 356 ; Letter of, 360.
Bluestocking Club, 215.
Bocock, Mrs. E. J., 183.
Bodiehon, Barbara, 178.
Bogstad, Anna, 43.
Bogelot, Madame Isabelle, 13, 18,44, 49,50,
80, 449: Address on Prison Work, 90-94;
Farewell, 425.
Bohemia, 262.
Bologna, 178.
Bombay, 262, 266.
Bonghi, 213.
Booth, Hon. Henry, 174.
Born, Helena, 42.
Boston, 119, 135, 168, 183, 267, 310, 337.
Bovee, Mrs., 457.
Bowles, Kev. Ada C, 10, 24, 49, 50, 448, 449;
Address, Women in the Ministry, 180-181.
Bowring. 20.
Boycott, 156.
Boyeson, Mr., 207.
Boyle, Mrs. H., 183.
Boyve, M. de, 152.
Bradford, Mrs. Cornelia, 168; Attorney-Gen-
eral (Kansas), 317.
Bradwell. Myra, 175, 176.
Brain weights compared. (See Brain, Sex in )
Brain, Sex in, by Helen Gardener, 369-382.
Brandes, Dr., 393.
Brazil, 179.
Bremer, Fredrika, 389.
Brent, Margaret, 173.
" Bridge of Siirhs," 270.
Briggs, Mrs. (See Olivia.)
Bright, .lolm, 11,1 15; Jacob, 9, 384; Mrs. Jacob
(Ursula), 9, 41, 233, 286, 453.
Bristol, Mrs. Augusta Cooper, 141, 458.
British National Society for Women's Suf-
frage, 447.
Brooks, Mrs. Harriet S., 458.
Brown* Kev. Antoinette. (See Blackwell.)
Brown, Martha McLellan, 12, 16, 246; Address,
Institutive Power, 80-82; Dr. Charlotte B.,
43.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 33, 113.
Bruce, Rosalie, 42.
Buell, Mrs. Caroline B., 458.
Buenos Ayres, 282.
Bulletin Continental, 255.
Bunsen, Baron de, 259.
Bunting, Percy WMiam, 290.
Bureau of Statistics, National, 135.
Burke, Edmund, 145.
Burlingame, Letit a L., 176.
Burleigh, Charles C, 36.
Burnett, Dr Mary Weeks, 13, 49; Address, The
Temperance Hospital, 123-125.
Burtis, Sarah Anthony, 17, 327.
Bushnell, Mrs. Elvira, 465,
Butler, Mrs. Josephne, 40, 234, 252, 253, 286,
422, 453; Letter of, 257-264.
Byer-", Mrs. 446,
Byron, 378 ; Brain of, 380.
Calcutta, 262.
California, 174, 175, 262; Greeting from, 43.
Call, The, of the International Council, 10-11,
447.
Calvin, 404.
Campbell Mrs. Helen, 14; Paper, Women in
the Trades, 146-151.
Canada, 30, 46, 116, 124, 384.
Canadian Woman Suffrage Association, 447.
Cantb, Mrs. Minna, 390, 391,458.
Carlile, Mrs., 445.
Carlisle, Bishop, 406.
Carlyle, Thomas, 136.
Carnot, President and Madame (of France).
453.
Carolina. (See North C. and South C.)
Carpenter, Mary, 258.
Carse, Mrs. Matilda B., 13, 14; Temperance
Temple, 125-127 ; Woman and Finance, 186-
188
Carthage, 268.
Cary, Alice, 367 ; Samuel, 338.
Casse, Mrs. 2<>3. .
Censor, The, 168. C^™""
Century, The, 432. v
Chace, Elizabeth Buffum, 338, 356 ; Sketch of
Abby Kelley, 364-366.
Chadwick, John W., 19, 357.
Chadz, Mrs. Augusta, 183.
( 'handler, Mrs. Lucinda B., Paper on Marriage
Reform, 284-286.
Channing, William Henry, 36.
Chant, Mrs. Laura Armiston, 16,17, 40, 44,45.
49, 50, 288, 344, 369, 449 ; Address on Social
Purity, 264-271.
Chapman, Maria Weston, 338, 362.
Charitable Associations, 10.
Cheney, Mrs. Edna D., 13, 17, 448,454; Re-
port, New England Hospital for Women and
Children. i»r» -08; Address in Religious Sym-
posium, 420-421.
Chicago, 119, 125, 155, 174, 255.
Child, Lydia Maria, 36, 337, 338, 362.
Children, In the Mines, 247-; In Factories, 7 56 ;
Mothers' Right to. in America, 227 ; In En-
gland, 233 ; How to Reach the, by Anna Gor-
don, 118-119.
Childs, George W., 455.
Christian Woman's Board of Missions, Report*
459-460.
Christiani, Mrs , 203
Christiania, 203, 279.
Church, 10; Early Christian, Woman in the*
400-407.
Cincinnati, 255.
Clark, Mrs. Helen Bright, 9, 41,42; Lucretia
Kendall, 289; Emi'y,360.
Clav, Cassius M., 457.
Cleveland, 339.
Cleveland, President, 225, 257 ; Mrs. Frances-
F., 225. 245. 257.
Close of the Council, 18, 425-438.
Closing Address. (S e Mrs. Stanton.)
Clubs, Women's, 217-218 ; New England, 225 ;.
New Century (Philadelphia), 218.
Cobbe, Frances Power, 137.
Cobden, Miss Jane, Letter of, 446.
Co- Education, 12, 53, 57, 59, 209 ; Dean Mich-
aels on, 75-77.
Colby, Mrs. Clara B., 188, 350, 357, 448,455,.
457 ; Maria, 42.
Cold, Mr., 207.
Cole, Catharine. (See Field, Martha R.)
Collalto, Count Massimo, 213, 214.
Colleges, Adelbert, 76, 77 ; Bryn Mawr, 12, 59,
79; Columbia, 218; Harvard (see Universi-
ties); Harvard Annex, 59; Hastings College
of Law, 175 ; Newnham, 80 ; Oberlin, 59,.
241, 331. 333, 338, 340; Princeton, 74;
Smith, 59; Union College of Law, 174, 175,
176 ; Vassar, 59 ; Welle«ley, 59, 60 ; Wes-
leyan Female, 12, 80; Woman's (of North-
western University), 12. (See Medical.)
Collegiate Instruction of Women, Society for
the, 447.
College Fellowships for Women, by Miss Cora
Benneson, 12, 77-80.
Collett, Camilla, 278.
Collins, Emily P., 17, 352.
Colman, Lucy N., 356 ; Letter of, 359.
Index.
463
Colonies, English, 200 ; French, 260.
Colombi, Marches!, 210.
Colorado, 157.
Columbia, District of, 128, 174.
Committee of Arrangements, Report of, 14 , ,
458.
Commons, House of, 230, 237, 25S, 384, 385,
386.
commonwealth, Topeka. 864.
Common Law. The, 227, 220, 242.
Commune, The French, 436.
Communists, 164, 486.
Conference of the Pioneers, 17, 322-368.
Congress, 18 I. 206.
Congregational Ministers, Association of , 333.
Congregational Women's Missionary Societies,
447.
Connecticut, 131, 134, 174; Constitution of,
296.
Consolidation of Workshops Act, Effect of, on
Women, 230.
Constantinople, Synod of, 404.
Constitution, American, 348, 382, 386, 432,
135 (see Amendments); of England, 382;
Sub-committee on, 440.
Constitutional Rights of Women in the United
states, by Isabella Beecher Hooker, 16, 292-
S04.
Contagious Diseases Acts, 23 1, 252 ; Repeal of,
•JO.-,.
Contributor, The, 108.
Conventions. (See Woman Suffrage, Temper-
ance, ctc.i
Cook, Mrs. Helen M., 313, 314.
Cooper, Peter, 314: Mis. Sarah B., 12; Paper
on Kindergarten Work. 67-1 2.
Co-operation, 158, 155; Statistics of, 152: Ad-
dress of Mrs. lata Harney Sayles. 152-153.
Co-operative News of America, The, 152.
Co-operators, Annual Congress of, 152.
Coppino, 213.
Copenhagen. 201, 205, 206, 207.
Corinne, 105.
Cornelia, 181.
Cost of Council, 10, 454, 455; of Temperance
Temple. 125.
Couzins, Miss Pluebe W., 174, 175, 256.
Courtney, Leonard, 384.
Uourant, The Hartford, 168.
Court of < lainis, 175.
Council of Women, The International, 9, 62,
94, 130,152. 171. 170. 101. 105, 214.223, 224,
250, 257. 202.274, 330, 831, 345,356, .557,
358, 359, 360, 364, 366, 400, 402,424.425.
426, 428, 120. 181, 132, 133, 188, 141,442,
443, 444, 446, 1 17. 448, 449, 457, 45s. 160 ;
(alitor, 9-10, 447 : Appeal, 447; Details of
Preparation, 45 1 ; < lommlttees of, 456.
Councils, Permanent, National and interna-
tional, 425,440; Constitutions of , 450 152;
Officers of, 152, 453; Recommendations,
452.
Cox, Mrs. A. L., 361.
Crandall. Prudence, 337, 356.
Club, The Hluestocking, 215.
Crispi, Signor, 213.
Croly. Mrs. Jennie C, 15, 50, 224, 354; Ad-
dress on Clubs. 217-218.
Crook, Mr. and Mrs.. 0.
Cromwell. Brain of, 378, 380, 381.
Crouch, Mary, 168.
Crown Princess of Denmark. (See Louise.)
Crudelli, Tommaso. 213.
Crusade, A New, by Elizabeth Boynton Har-
bert, 210-218.
Cuba, 202,
Curtis, Lucy W., 455.
Custody of In 'ants Act. 234.
Cuvier, Brain of, 370, 378, 380, 381.
D.
Dakota, 157.
Dall, Caroline H., 17, 18, 415.
Danish Women's Association, 15, 50, 203-206.
Danish Women's Society for the Protection of
Young Girls, 15, 50 ; Report of, 200-203.
Dante, 378.
Darlington, 229.
David, Louise, 444 _
Davis, Paulina Wright, 36, 360 ; Edward M.,
36.
Deborah, 404.
De Foresta, 213.
Delaware, 131, 256.
Delegates of the Council, Meetings— First, 448;
Second, 449 : Third, 449 ; Fourth, 453 ; Fifth,
15 1.
Democratic Party, 307, 309 ; Democrats, 319.
Denmark, 30, 32, 179, 200, 207, 259, 393, 394 ;
Woman's Rights in, 303-394 ; Women's Edu-
cation, 206-207 ; Woman's Association, 207K»^
2i i(>: Women's Union for Protection of Young 1
Girls, 200-203. /
Dennisou, 388. - »
Depretis, 213.
Deraismes, Maria, 90, 444.
De Sanctis, 213.
De Stael, Madame, 33.
Den' sch- Amerikaner, JJer, 188.
Deyo, Rev. Amanda, 11, 10.
Diaz. Mrs. Abby Morton, 15,50, 223; Report
on Industrial and Educational Unions, 198-
2i K ).
Dickens, Charles, 161.
Dickinson, Anna, 133, 134, 256, 339; Mrs.,
310.
Dlehl, Mrs. Anna Randall, 313.
Diggs, Mrs. Anna L., 457.
Dilke, Mrs. Ashton (Margaret), 17, 40, 44, 45,
40. 50, 236, 237, 440 : Address, Woman Suf-
frage in England, 382 388.
Diotime, 165, 181.
Disabilities of Women, Legal, 15 ; Address by
Mrs. L. D. Blake, 227 220.
Divorce, In America, 227 ; England, 235 ; In-
dians, 239.
Douglass, Frederick, 47, 323, 324, 352 ; Remi-
niscences of, 327-331.
Dover, 264.
Dow, Neal, 342 ; Mrs. Mary E. Gray, 159, 455.
Dows, Baron, 232.
Draper, Mrs. Margaret, 168.
Drummond, James, 21,
Dublin, 9 ; Greeting from, 42-43.
Dumas, Alexandre, 440.
Duniway, Mrs. Abigail Scott, Letter of, 442.
Dunn. Julia Mills, 19,
Dye, Mary, 457.
Dyer, Alfred S., 255, 260.
E.
Eastern Star, Order of, 447.
Eastman, Mary F., 15, 49,50,222, 448, 449;
Address on Organization, 195-198.
Edinburgh, 9 ; Branch of the Federation for
the Repeal of State Regulation of Vice, 49.
Edson, Dr. Susan A., 17, 256, 352.
Edmundson, Mary, 42.
Education— College Fellowships forWomen, 12,
77-80 ; Higher Education for Women in the
United States, 12, 51-63; Retrospection, 12,
72-75 ; Scholarships, 77 ; State Appropria-
tions, 59 ; Statistics, 52, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 74,
208, 209.
Education of Women in Denmark, 206-207;
England, 171; Finland, 389-391; France,
171 ; India, 63-67 ; Italy, 208, 209, 210, 211 ;
Russia, 439 ; Switzerland, 171 ; United States,
51-63.
464
International Council of Women.
Education- President James B. Angell, 73 ;
William Ellery Channing, 73; Mark Hopkins,
73 ; Mrs. Seager, 73 ; Henry W. Sage, 73 ;
Matthew Vassar, 59, 73.
Education— "Female," 51,52; Moral R°form,
258 ; Objectors to Higher Education of
Women, 53, 51; Deterioration in Schools, 167.
(See Co-education, Colleges, Educational In-
stitutions, Kindergartens, Medical Colleges,
Universities, etc.)
Educational Institutions for Women— Brad-
ford Academy, 58 ; Friends School at Wil-
mington, 52 ; Genesee Wesleyan Seminary,
73; Maine Wesleyan Seminarv and Female
College, 53; Lane Seminary, 350; Institutions
in Boston, 52 ; Troy Female Seminary, 53 ;
University Examinations. 5:5; Correspond-
ence Societies. 5:3 ; The " Female Seminary,"
52, 5:5 ; Normal Schools. 52, 57, 58.
Egypt, 101, 260, 20s. 307, 308.
Ehrenrooth, Miss. 389, 391,
Eliot, George. 33, 68, 1 l'.t ; Dr. William G., 255.
Elliot, President, 107
Elmy, Mrs. Elizabeth Wolston, 233, 234, 286,
453.
Enforcement Act of 1870, 301.
England. 9,39,41, 12. 130, 152, 171. 1*0, 208,
232, 234, 236, •-'55. 250. 257. 258,259,262,
264, 2<>5, 268, 382, 383, 885, :;s<;. ;;s7. 388,
426, 138, 1 18, 111. 1 Hi.
" England to America," Poem by L. Ormiston
Chant. 271.
Eric, 134.
Ernst, Sarah Otis. 338.
Estlin, Mary A., 12.
Europe, 42, 125. 208, 25! t, 262. 343.
Eve, 180.
Everett, Martha A., 16, Hi; Address on School
Suffrage in Massachusetts, 300-311.
Evreninova, Miss, 177. 178.
Excelsior. 392.
Exponent, The Woman's, 108.
Factory Act of 1874 (England), 230.
Fau-chUd, President, 341.
Fales. Mrs. [mogene C, 152.
I'ambri, Paulo, 21 1.
Family, Law in the. 15, 211.
Farmers, Wives and Daughters, 130.
tiirmer'g Friend, The, l to.
Fanners, Women as. by Mrs. Esther L. Warner,
11. 156-159.
Fa vie, Jules,- 259.
Pawcett, Mrs. Millicent Garrett, 291, 383, 453,
158.
Feddersen, Mrs. Astrid Stampe, 204, 206.
Federation of Labor Unions. Communication
from, 163-164.
Ferguson, Eliza < '., 458.
Fibiger, Miss Mathllde, 393.
Field, Mrs. Martha K.. 1 1. 50, 1 10; Address of,
181-183; Dr. Edna It.. 48.
finance, Women and. (See Carse, Matilda.)
Finland, 30, 32, 205, 388, 389, 391, 392,425,
lit;, 127; Women's Work in Finland. 388-
392.
Finnish Women's Union, 12, 15, 17, 40, 392.
First Woman's Rights Convention, 322, 323,
324. (See "tanton, B. Cady.)
Fletcher, Miss Alice, 15: Address on Legal
Conditions of Indian Wome ■, 237-241.
Florence, 209.
Folkstone, 267.
Folliero de Luna. Aurelia, 214.
'Foltz, Clara S.. 175.
Ford, Isabella 0., 458.
Formal Opening of the Council, 12, 30-50.
Forney, Colonel John W., 139.
Foster, Mrs. Judith Ellen. 13, 16, 110, 177;
Address of, 304-306; Julia T., 155, 150;
Stephen S.. 365 : Kaehel G , 9, 10, 11, 50, 225.
350,351,448,449,453,455, 156, 157.
France, 0, 30, 32. 89, 90, 146, 178, 180, 234,
238, 25! t. :;ss, 438, I 13.
Franco-German War, 105.
Franchises in England, 386, 387.
Franklin, Mrs. Christine Ladd, 70.
Fraser, Lord, 231.
Frazar, Mrs. Caroline M. S., 16, 50 ; Report of,
272
Frederiksen, Mrs. Ada Monrad, 12, 15, 50, 217;
Paper on Education of Women in Denmark,
206-21 >7 .
Frederiksen, Miss Kirstine, 458 ; Report of
Danish Woman's Association, 203-206;
Woman's Rights in Denmark. 393-3!) 1.
Freewill Baptist Missionary Society (Woman's)
15,49,200.
Fremont, Jessie Benton, 339 ; John C, 319.
French Woman's Union for the Care of the
Wounded, 49.
Friederici, J., 219.
Friends of Young Girls, International Union
of the. 1 17.
Fua Fusinato, Erminia, 209.
Fuller. Margaret 129. 168; Sarah E., 102.
Fund. Mutual Relief, 220.
Gabba, 213.
Gage, Frances D. (Aunt Fanny), 17,36,339,
357, 300; Mrs. Matilda Josiyn, 11. 15. 17.
is. is. 189, 241. 356, 456; Reminiscences,
347; woman in the Early Christian Church,
400-407.
Gains, Industrial, 181-153.
Galllmore, Dr. Elizibeth. 43.
(iambetta, 378.
Gardner, Anna, 17, 22.
Gardener, Helen, 17,431 ; Sex in Brain, 369-
382.
Garneld, Eliza Ballou, 459.
Garibaldi, 259.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 36, 331, 337, 347.
Grand Army of the Republic, Woman's Re-
lict Corps of the, 13, 19. 101-103.
G. A. R., Ladies of the, 13. 11), ss.
Gaspar n. Count and Countess Agenor de. 259.
Gay, Elizabeth Neal, 322.
Oaztt.e, Wyandotte, 30 1.
Gazeli , 'fin. 168; Virginia, 183.
Georgia, 128, 131.
George, Henry, 111, 308.
Genoa, 211. •
" Gentleman's' Day " atSorosiS. 215.
German Women's Union, 2l!>, 1 17.
Germany, 32, 48, 1 16, 151, 153, 208, 218, 259,
202. 888, 394, 138; The Woman Movement
in, 219, 220.
Gibbons, Abby Hopper, 255, 356.
GUI, It. C. 135.
Ginuins, Madame de. 201.
Girl Pursued by Police. Incident of, 201, 205.
Gladstone, WlIQam P., 37, 384.
Gledstone, ttev. J. P.. 255.
Gnostics, The, 102.
Goddarri, Mary K.. 168,
(iixhi/'s hadietf Look, 35 1
Go'dschmidt, Henriette, 219.
Gougar, Mrs. Helen M., 175, 399, 456, 457,
458.
Gordon, Anna, 13 ; Address, How to Reach the
Children, 118-119; la ira de Force, 175.
Grange. The, 137; Woman in the (by Mrs.
Worden), 14, 137-142; Reading Circles of,
140
Gray, Mary T., 356 ; Letter of, 363-361.
Index.
465
Great Britain, 32, 1 52, 133, 255, 257, 304.
Greece, 190, 191, 268.
Greenwood, Grace. (See Lippincott, Mrs.
Sarah.)
Greeley, Horace, 1(58, 350.
Green, Mrs. Ann K., 108.
Greetings and Letters, 12, 39-43.
Gregory of Nyassa, 104.
Grenlell, Alice. 42.
GreybeiJ, Miss Mary, 469.
Grew, Miss Mary, 17, 322, 338, 3 47, 356, 361 ;
Reminiscences of, 34 1-3 1<>.
Griess-Trant, M.. 444.
Gritting, Josephine, 36.
Gripenberg, Alexandra, 12,15,17,44, lit. 50,
1 is : Woman's Work in Finland, 388-392.
Grimaldi, 213.
Grimke, Angelina, 132, 189, 331, 333, 337, 354,
360, 361, 362; Sarah, 331,333,337, 354,360,
861, 362.
Groth, Sophia Magelsson, 16,44,49,427. 149;
Paper on Women's Position in Norway, 278-
28 1
Grove, Mr., 207.
Grundtvig, Bishop (N. F. S.), 204,205,207;
Miss Elizabeth, 205.
Guardian, The, 168.
Gustalson, Mrs. Zadel B„ IT. 46, 50, 449; Ad-
dress of, 394-398.
Guyot, M., 416.
H.
Haddock, Emma, 175.
Hagman, Miss. 391 .
Hale, Kcv. Edward Everett, 196, 221.
Halk.jer, Mrs. Julia, 200.
Hall, Miss C. A., 138.
Halton. 117.
HalloweU, Mary H., 17,327.
Hamburg, 262.
Hammond, Dr. Wm. A., 369, 374, 375. 378,
379,380.381.
Hanaford, Key. Phoebe A.. 10, 24.
Hanson, Mrs., 200; Miss Ida Falbe, 204.
Harbert, Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton, 16, 18,21,
23, SO, 157; God is Love, U5-418; a New
Crusade. '-MO 248.
Harberton. Lady r. W.,468,
Haroourt, Sir William. 384.
Harper, Mrs. Prances E. W.,18; TheNeglected
Rich. 110-120.
Harrah, Kev.C. C, 23.
Baslam, Mrs. Anna Maria, 9, 12. 115.
Hawaiian Kingdom. 170.
Heikel, Miss Koeina 300.
Heine, Heinrich, 1 10.
Helena, Empress, ISO.
Helmer, Bessie Brad well, 176.
Helsingfore, 389. 392.
Herrick, Elizabeth, 247.
Herring, Mrs. C. V.. ill.
Higginson. T. W.. 335, 356; Letter of. 367.
Higher Education of Women, Society for the,
417.
Hills. Manila M.. 15, IT. 40, 422; Report of
Free Baptist Missions, 200.
Hill. Sir Roland, 1 Hi.
History of Woman Suffrage. (See Woman Suf-
frage.)
Hitchcock. Almeda E., 177.
Hoffman, Clara Cleghorne, 16. 40. 148; Ad-
dress on Social Purity, 283-284.
Hoghro, Mr. Svend, 204.
Holland. 259, 394.
Holyoake, George Jacob, 152, 153.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 195.
Holt, Mrs. Mary, 168.
Holy Week. 421.
Holloway, Laura C, 14 ; Address, 167-160.
Homes, Woman's Industrial (Salt Lake City),
352 ; Servants', 201, 202, 203.
" Home, Sweet Home," 13, 21, 128.
Hong-Kong, 262.
Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 15, 16, 18, 189, 400,
421; Religious Creed, 418-420; Constitu-
tional Rights of Women in the United States,
292-304.
Hopper, Jsaac T., 356.
Hospitals, National Temperance, 123-125;
London Temperance, 124 ; Women Physi-
cians in, 172 ; For the Insane, 1T2 ; Managed
by Women, 95-98. (See Cheney, Ednah D.)
Ho8> rap, Jens, 898; C, 205.
Hosmer, Harriet, 130.
Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 15, 18, 4T, 48, 40, 223,
254, 420, 4 48; The Power of Organization,
189-105.
Howell, Mary Seymour, 45T.
Hughes, Thomas, 153.
Hugo, Victor, 80, 180, 259.
Hungary. 180. 259.
Huling, Caroline. 35T.
Humbert, Professor. 254, 259, 260.
Humboldt, William vim, 311.
Hunt, Mrs. Mary H., 13, 425; Our Reasons,
127-128; Mrs. Jane, 322; Judge, 298, 299,
.•urn, 301, ••:(>;.
Hutchinson, John W., IT, 32T, 334, 356, 357 ;
Original Song, 326
Husbandry, Patroift of. (See Grange )
Hubs, John, 40 I.
Huxley, Professor, 1T3.
Hyde Park Demonstration, 265.
Hypatia, 165.
Ibsen, Henrik, 2T8, 2T9, 393.
Idaho, 112.
Independence, Declaration of, 39, 183, 294,
805, 323,336, 346, 132.
India. 30, 32, II, 96, 126,388. 150; Bombay,
(! 1, 07; Calcutta, 6 1. 07; English Government
in, 66; Education of Women. 63-67; Hyder-
abad Sum, 07; Lahore, 97 ; Madras, 64,67;
Prostitution in, 260.
Indian Association, Woman's National, 49;
Report by Mrs. Ouinton, 100-101.
Indian Women, Legal Condition of, 237-241.
Indiana, 325.
Indianapolis. 220, 147.
Indians, KM) KM.
Industrial Gains, Woman's, by Mary Liver-
more, 131-137.
Industrial, Associations, 1<>; School, 16.
Industries, 14, 129-164; Statistics, 135 ; Vari-
ous, open to Women, 129, ISO, 184. 135;
W men in Factories, 150; Wages of Women,
129, 138, 1 17. 1 Is, 150, 151, 15 1 ; Women In
Trades, 146-152.
Industry and Art. Female I nstitute of, 203.
International Council of Women. (-?ee Coun-
cil..
International Association of Friends of Girls,
2(>2: Federation for the Abolition of State
Regulation of Vice, 254.
Iowa. 17 1, 175, 227.
Illinois. 1 , 1.
1 in; a I Is. Senator J. J., on Woman Suffrage, 317,
318 ; Olive Frazer, IT.
Insane. (See Hospitals.)
Institutions, Women as Physicians in, 1T2.
Institut ve Power, by Martha McLellan
Brown, 12, 80-82.
Ireland, 9, 30, 232, 444.
tele of Man, 384.
Italy, 15, 32. 151, 153,200, 259, 262, 388 ; Wo-
man's Condition in, by Signora Salazaro,
208-214.
466
International Council of Women.
j.
Jackson, Andrew, 356; Francis, 337 ; Jane' to,
17 ; Dr. James C , 356 ; Letter of Dr. James,
364.
Jamaica, 459.
Janeiro, Rio fie, 262.
Japan, 114, 115, 126, 459.
Jefferson, Thomas, 292, 336.
Jeffersonian Democrats, 308.
Jeunes Filles, Union dee Amies des, 203.
Jewett, Sarah Mary, 42.
Joan d'Arc, 134.
Johns, Mrs. Laura M., 14,16,350,456,457;
Address, Municipal Suffrage in Kansas, 315-
Johnson, Oliver, 356; Letter of, 366-367.
Journalism, Woman in, by Marion McBride,
183-184 ; Woman in Journalism, by Laura ( .
Holloway, 167-169.
Journal, The (New York), 168.
Julian, Hon. George W., 356 ; Letter of, 362.
June, Jennie. (See Croly, Mrs. >
Jury in Susan B. Anthony's Trial, 299, 300.
Justin, 402.
Justitia, 357.
K.
Kalevala, 388.
Kansas, 129, 130, 157. 17 1, 175, 225, 227. 251,
266, 336, 348, 363, 364 ; Equal Suffrage As-
sociation, 14, 315.
Karr, Hon. A. G., 175.
Keefer, Mrs. Bessie Starr, 13,46,49,50,449;
Address of, 116-118.
Kelley, (Foster) Abby, 132, 331, 332, 333, 338,
347, 354 ; Sketch of, by Mrs. Chace, 364-366.
Kemp, Dr. Agnes, 458.
Kempin, Frau Dr. E., 177, 179.
Kennan, Judge, 432.
Kilgore, Carrie Burnham, 175.
Kimball, Mrs. M. P., 140, 141.
Kimber, Abby, 322.
Kimberly, Mrs. Sherman, 141.
Kindergarten, 12,198; In its Development of
Faculty, by M is. ( oopcr, 67-72 ; Mrs. Leland
Stanford, 70.
Kingsley, Charles, 137, 109, 171.
Kirkland, Miss Eliza, 458.
Klein, Mr., 203.
Knights of Labor, 14, 50, 163 ; What they are
Doing for Women, by Mrs. Barry, 153-156;
by Hulda B. Loud, 143-1 16.
Knowles, Mrs. Cordie B., 48; Report of Chris-
tian Woman's Board of Missions, 459-460.
Kvlrutan og Sornfundet, 204.
Kowalevski, Professor Sonja, 458.
Krebs, Miss Johanna, 168.
Krog, MissGina, 43, 280.
Kropotkin, Prince Pierre, 432 ; Letter of, 438-
441.
L.
La Cornelia, 214.
La Donna, 214.
Le Karon, Marie, 394.
Labor, Organizations, 146 ; Question, 146 ; Sta-
tistics, 130, 161 (see Knights of Labor) ; Labor
Party. 309.
Lamb, Charles, 303.
1 amont, Secretary, 224
Laodicea, Council of. 404.
Lapland, 401.
Laveleye, M. Emile de, 254, 259.
Lausanne, International Congress at, 201.
Law, Women in, by Mrs. Bitten iiender, 173-
179 ; Law n\ the Family, 241.
Lazare, St. (Prison), 13, 49, 90, 92, 93, 94 ; Re-
port by Madame Bogelot, 90-91.
Lecky, 252.
Lee. Rev. Luther, 340 ; Sister of Robert, 331.
Leeds, 152,258.
Leffler, Mrs. Anna Charlotte Edgren, 468.
Legal Conditions of Women, 226-2 15 ; In Italy,
212,213; Among the Indians, •±:\~ • In the
Three Kingdoms, 229-237 ; In Finland, 388,
389 ; In the United States, 22(5-229.
Legal Disabilities of Women, by Lillie Deve-
reux Blake, 226-228.
Legalized Vice, 252, 253, 254. 255, 202; In
Norway, 282; In Italy, 212, 213.
Legions, Loyal Temperance, 118, 125.
Leipzig:, 219.
Leslie, Mrs. Frank, 184; Letter of, 442-443.
Liberal Associations in England, Women's, 15,
17, 40,42, 46, 5(). 304, 382.
Lidgett, Elizabeth, S., 291.
Liberator, 'J'lie, 337.
Liberal Unionists, 384.
Lily, The, 356, 360.
Linnaeus, 401.
Lincoln, Abraham, on Woman Suffrage, 338.
Lippencott, Mrs. Sarah (Grace Greenwood), 17;
Reminiscences of, 353-355
Livermore, Mary A., 14, 19. 184,418,448 ; Ad.
dress, Woman's Industrial Gains during the
Last Half-Century. 131-137.
Liverpool, 9, 32.
Loefgren, Mrs. Betty, 391, 458.
Loeken, Mrs. Antonie, 458 ; Miss Olany, 458.
Lockwood, Mrs. Belva A., 175; Mis. Mary 8.,
155, 1 56,
London, 9, 149, 150, 151, 166, 183,255, 266,
355.
Longfellow, Samuel, 20, 22, too, 424,
Longshore, Dr. Hannah, 17,41,352,356,363.
Lord, Fiances, 41.
Lords, House of. 266, 385.
Loud. Miss Hulda 15.. 14, 142, 163 ; Address on
Knights of Labor, 143-1 10.
Louise, Queen of Prussia, 305; Crown Princess
of Denmark, 203, 206 453; Letter of , 216.
Louisiana, 131, 158. 458.
Lowell. James Russell, 160 237.
Lou; ll Offering, 'The, 160. 101, 162,468.
Lowry, Dr. Isabella and Dr. Agnes, 13.
Loyal League, 189.
Lozier, Dr. Clemence S., 17, 356.
Luca<. Mrs. Margaret Bright, 9, 41, 115.
Luther, Martin, 129, 404.
Lussana, 213.
M.
McBride, Marion, 14; Paper on Journalism,
183-184.
McClintock, Elizabeth, 322; Mrs. Mary Ann,
322.
McDonnell, Mrs. Mary, 46. 49, 449.
McDowell, Rose, 42.
McLaren, Pris ilia Bright (Mrs. Duncan), 44,
286, 3 1 1. 153 ; Letter of, 39-41 ; Mr. and Mrs.
Charles, 9; Mr. and Mrs. Walter, 9.
McNeir, Mrs. Laura, 13, 49; Address of , 88-89.
McPherson, Mary E., 456.
Macon, Council of, 405.
Mackay, 343.
Madonna, 126.
Madias. 206.
Magellan. Straits of, 262.
Mahan, President, 341.
Maine, 131, 154, 174.
Mallet, from Louisiana, The, 458.
Manchester, 9.
Mancini, 210.
Mann. Charlotte Joy, 17.
Mansfield, Arabella A., 174.
Marble, Mrs. Ellen A., 16, 318.
Marcellina, 403.
Index.
467
Mark Twain, 381.
Married Women's Property— In America, 220,
228; In England, 231.
Maryland, 131. 173.
Mason, Agnes, 13.
Martin, E. W., 138 ; Ellen A., 174.
Martineau, Harrier, 134, 161, 258, 338, 362.
Massachusetts, 131, 134, 14 1. 160, 171. 244.
309, 311, 32.-,. 381, 337, 357, 457 ; School Suf-
frage Association, 16, 49.
Matrons, Police, by Mrs. Barney, 120-123.
Maxamilla, 404.
May. Miss Abby W., 310 ; Rev. Samuel. 333.
Mayflower, The. 484.
Mazzinl, Joseph, 259.
Medical Journal, British, 177.
Medical Colleges (Admitting Women), of Bos-
ton University, 97; Woman's, of Philadel-
phia, 96, i>7; Geneva, 3 17.
Medical Associations. 169.
Medicine, Alcohol as. 123. 124, 125; Women
in, by Dr. Stevenson, 14, 169-173.
Mendenhall, Dinah. 17. 352.
Merrick, Mrs. Caroline E., 49.
Merritt, Dr. Emma S.. 43.
Methodist Women's Missionary Societies, 1 17.
Mexico, 179,262.
Meyerhelm, Madam Anderson, 115.
Michaels, Kena A, 12, 14; Address on Women
as Educators. 165-167; Co-education, 75-77.
Michigan, 17 I. 354.
Milan, 210, 211.
Milford, 242.
Mill, John Stuart. 1 15, 165, 234, 335, 339, 384 ;
Mrs. John Stuart. 393.
Miller, Associate Justice. 175.
Mini s. Children in the. 2 17.
Ministry. Women in the, 86,88; Number of,
181 : Address by Rev. Ada C. Bowles, 180-
182.
Ministerial Conference. Women's, 49.
Minnesota. 1,1; Woman Suffrage Association,
16.
Minneapolis. 31s.
Minor, Mrs. Virginia L., 17, 256.
Missionaries. Medical, 171.
Missionary. Won an as, by Mrs. Jennie Fowler
Willin-, 86 88; Work, by Harriet X. Morris,
88 100.
Missionary Helper, The, 200.
Mission ry '/'i>ti/>'/.<_ The, 460.
Missions, ( hristian Woman's Board of, 49, 459-
160.
Mississippi River, 262.
Missouri, 17 1.
Mitchell. Professor Maria, 166.
Modern Language Association, 167.
Mohl, Mrs. Aurelia Hadlev, 14,50; Address of,
184-186.
Moleschott, 213.
Monrad, Bishop. 206. 393.
Montana. 442, 159.
Montevideo, 2<>2.
Montgomery, Jamc, 19, 20, 418.
Moore, Miss H becea, !> ; Mrs. Margaret, 44.
Moody, Mr., 407.
Moral Education Society of Boston, 16, 50,
272 ; of District of Columbia, 16.
Moral Law, Identical for Both Sexes, 250, 254,
204, 270. 277.
Morandi, Felicita, 210.
More, Hannah, 51.
Morelli, 213.
Morgan, Professor. 341.
Morris. Miss Harriet X., 13; Address, Mission-
ary Work, 90-100.
Morsier. Madame, Emily de, 90, 261.
Morselli, 379.
Morton, Dr. i auline, 352.
Temperance-
Monnonism. 29(1.
Mount Vernon, 339.
Moschus, John, 404.
Moscow, 202.
Mother Instinct. 245.
Motherhood, 247 ; of God, 400.
Mothers' Right to Childreu— In America, 227 :.
In England, 233. 234.
Mott, James, 324, 335 ; Lucretia, 30, 31. 36,.
246, 322, 323, 324, 325, 338, 340, 347, 348,
353, 354, 360, 863; Her Motto, 422; Lydia,
256; Richard. 36
Mullen, Mary M., 183.
Muller, Henrietta, 9, 40, 41 ; Mrs. Marie, 40.
Mulvany, Isabella, 42.
Municipal Suffrage for Women— In Belfast,.
4 15; England, 383; Finland, 391; Kansas'
315-318.
Mutual Improvement Association (Utah), 108..
X.
Xashville, 155.
Xason. Mary, 456.
Xaples, 264.
Napoleon, 305.
N iionalJSra, The, 854.
National Woman Suffrage Association, 9, 10„
11. 12. 13, 15, 10. 18, 30, 31, 33. 188, 438,.
11,, 45 1. 155, 456 ; of Massachusetts, 276.
National Vigilance Association. 266.
Xat onal Woman's Christian Te:
Union. (See Wi niutn's, etc.)
Nebraska. 157. 159, 17 1.
Xeera, 21(1.
Netherlands, The, 259.
Newman, Mrs. J. P., is, loo.
Xew England Hospital for Women n"d Chil-
dren, 95,354,432. (See alsothe Errata, page
Xew Hampshire. 181, 13 1.
Xew Jersey, 131, 227, 339 ; Women Voting in,
330.
Xew Orleans, 131, 183, 185, 225, 202.
Xew York, 15. 52, 131, 132, 133, 146, 147, 148,
149,152,155, 105, 107, 108, 174, 217, 255,
266, 325, 337.435.
Xew Fork Committee for Prevention of State
Regu ationof Vice, 10, 252, 255.
Xew Mexico, 1 12.
New Paihs (Seue liahnen), 437.
Newport, 437.
News-Letter, The, 168.
Xeymann, Mrs. (lira, 17,168, 315; Address,.
Sent inentalism in Politics, 896-399.
Xie iol. Mrs. Elizabeth Pease, 9, 40, 41,264,
34 1. 866 : Letter of. 857.
Nichols, ClHrin* I. H., 30, 334. 350, 360;
Sketch of, by Mary T. Gray, 303-304.
N'icholson. Mrs. Eliza J., 183,
Xiel-on, Mrs. Ragna, 279, 458.
Nightingale. Florence, 25s.
Nijni ovgorod, 202.
Nihilists, 164, 436.
Nominations for Permanent Councils, Commit-
tee on, 449.
North Carolina, 131, 171.
Norway, 30. 32, 43, 178, 203, 205,217, 259,
27s, 281, 427, 429.
Norwegian Woman's Suffrage Society, 43, 49*
NyUunok, 280.
Official St ttement of the Council, 453, 454.
0.
Ohio, 171, 228, 325.
"Old Sal," 121. 122.
"Olivia," Gift to found Woman's College, 427,
Ongelin, Miss, 391.
Order of the Eastern Star, 447.
Oregon, 154, 174.
468
International Council of Women.
Organization of Permanent Councils, Commit-
tee on, 449.
Organization, S ssion of, 180-225 ; Power of,
by Mrs. Jul a Wan! Howe, 15, 189- 195.
"ORafferty, Mistress, on the Woman Ques-
tion," bv Grace Greenwood. 355.
Origen, 402.
< )ile ins, Counc 1 of, 405.
Orine, Miss Eliza, 9, 177.
Ostler, Mrs. Alfred, 0.
Our Union, 186, 188.
P.
Paine, Thomas, 145.
Paley, Archbishop, 415.
Fall Ma'l Gazette, 265, 266.
Palludan-Muller, 207.
Palmer, Senator and Mrs. T. W., 458.
Panama, 262.
Paris, 9, 13(i, 151, 255, 440 ; Council of, 405.
Parker, Mrs. Margaret E., 0, 41: Theodore,
380,385.
Parliament, English, 260, 384.
Parnell, Mr., 305.
Parsons, Miss E., 456 ; Henry C, 455.
Pastoral Letter, The, 387.
Patents Granted to Women, 135, 136.
Peace Union, Universal, 49; Woman's Peace
and international Arbitration Society, 49.
Pearce, Martha K., 170.
Peirce. Sarah H., 17.
Pennsylvania, 181, 154, 156, 175, 247, 331,
336.
Pericles, 180.
Perovskaya, Sophia, 439, 441.
Persians, The, 19 1.
Peters, Louise Utto, 219.
Petersburg, St., l <s
Petitioners for Woman Suffrage, 293.
Pettiugiil, Mrs. E. F., 456.
Phelps. 388.
Philadelphia, 123, 133, 136, 168,218,255, 3 1 1,
348.
Philanthropies, Session of, 12, 83-109.
Philips. Mrs.. 9.
Phillips, Wendell, 36, 2 17, 331, 335, 338, 342 ;
Mrs. Ann Green, 822.
Physicians, Women as, 171.
Pioneers. (See Conference.)
Pierantoni, (ira/.ia, 21<>.
Pierre, Eugenie Poronie, 41.
Pierce, Secretary of State, 212.
Pierson, Jane, 360. •
Pindar. 165.
Pit Brow Women, 230.
Plymouth Bock, 434.
Poet, Lidia, 177, 178.
Poland, lso.
Police Matrons, 272. (See Matrons.)
Political Club (Copenhagen), 447.
Political Conditions— 1st Session of, 16, 290-
321 ; 2d Session of, 17, 300- 100.
Political Parties and Woman Suffrage, by Har-
riet H. Robinson, 10, 306-809.
Politics, Sentinientalism in, by Mrs. Clara Ney-
mann, 17, 398-399.
Pomeroy, Hon. Samuel C, 17, 31^.
Poor Law in England, 383.
Pope Leo XIH, 406.
Popular Set nn- Monthly, 196, 369, 380.
Porter, R bert P., 13
Portland, 122.
Post, Amy, 17, 327, 352.
Potomac, 128.
Poverty of Women, 170.
Powderly, Terence V., 153.
Powell, Mis. Anna Rice, 16,50: Address, 250-
257; Miss Mauri, 14, 173.
Poyser, Mrs., 244.
Press Association, Woman's International, 14,
50, 182; Report of, 183-18 1; Woman's Na-
tional, 14. 50. 185; Statistics of, 184, 185,
ISO.
Preston, Ann, 352.
Pr oe, Rebecca Newell, 42.
Priestman, Anna and Mary, 9, 11, 42.
Primrose League, 304, 385, 11,.
Primaries. The (Utah), 108, 109.
Prison Work in Paris, bv Madame Bogelot,
90-94.
Pr fession«, Session of, 165-188.
Pr 'gramme of the Council, 11-28.
Prohibition, Movement in Great Britain, 1 , ;
Party in America, 308. 309.
Prostitution. (See Legalized Vice.)
Protestant Episcopal Women's Missionary So-
ciety, 447.
Prot stant Prisons. Work in the (France), 447.
Protection of Voung Girls, League for i «e, II,.
Pugh, Miss Esther, 120; Mi <s Sarah, 322.
Pundita Hnmabai Sarasvati. (See Kainabai.)
Purvis, Harr et, 150; Robert, 17, 47: Remi-
niscences of. 342 -3 1 \._
Putnam, Caroll»e A., 17.
Pythagoras, 420.
Q.
Quarterly Review, Oberlin, 841.
Queen of Italy, 209, 210, 214.
Quetp stand, 183.
Qutnton, Mrs. Amelia S., 13, 19: Report of
Women's National Indian Association, 100-
101.
R.
Railroad Rates for Council, Committee on. 155,
456.
Ralph, Mary, 12.
Ramabai Sarasvati, Pundita, 12, 27, 44, 86,
255 ; Address, The Women of India, 03-07.
Raphael, Clara, 898.
Rwsegna dtgli Interessi Femminili (Review of.
Women's Interests), 214.
Reach tbe Children, How to, by Miss Anna
Gordon. 13, 188-119.
Reading Clubs, Women's, 44 , .
liebekah. Daughters of, 4 17.
Reception, The Public, 23.
Red Cross, The, 13. 49, 352 ; In Denmark. 394 :
Address on. by Miss < lara Barton, 103-107.
Reforms, the Outgrowths of the Woman
Suffrage Agitation, 3 l.
Regulationists, The. 256.
Held, Clementine, 183.
Relief Corps of the G. A. R., Woman's. (See
Grand Army.)
Keligious— Service, 11. 24-29, Symposium,
loo- 125 : Truths which can be Established by
Science, lo, 1 15.
Republic, The, 128, 107; Battle Hymn of,
189.
Republican Party, The, 307 308, 309, 339.
Republican, Tin Springfield, 307.
Revolution, The, 86.
Revolution, 146, 15 1. 164 : The French, 145.
Rhode Island, 131. 107, 364.
Rich, The Neglected, Address by Frances El-
len Harper. 119-120.
Ri' hards, Mrs. Emily S., 13, 49; Reports of ,
107-109, 455 '.lane, mistake for Emily).
Richardson, Mrs. Victoria M .. 13,49,50,449;
Report of, 88 : Maria, 289.
Richer. Leon, BO.
Riga 202.
Riggs House. The, 241. 315, 1 Is. 1 19, 455. 157.
Rights of Women, Property. 132. (Sec Legal
( Condition".)
Rigsdag. The, 203, 205.
Rixford, Sallie M., 456.
R bespterre, 145.
Index.
469
Robinson. Mrs. Harriet H., 16, 22, 159,162,
386, 168; Address of, 806-809; W. 8. (War-
rington), 807 : I eila J., 170, 177.
Rochdale, l 52, 163.
Rochester, 327.
Rovers, Mrs. Can dine Gilkey, 456; Hon. Henry
Wade, 17 4; Dr. Seth and Anna, 468.
Rogstad, Miss Anna. 158.
Roland, Madame, 33.
Romanes, Professor, 876.
Home, 91, 180, 181, 190, 209. 210. 26S.
Rose, Ernestine L., 189, 355, 357 ; Extracts
from Addre s. 368-860.
Rowsing, Mrs., 208.
Russell, Hon. Charles T., 176.
Russell, Harriet W., 12; Penelope. 168 ; Mr., 9.
Russia. 153, 178, 180, 262, 388, 3b9, 391, 429,
482, 438, 440.
Russian, 262.
Salazaro, Fanny Zampini, 15, 458 ; Paper, The
Women of Italy, 208-214.
Salisbury, Lor •. 37, 384.
Sand. George, 255.
Sargent, Mrs. Ellen Clark, 455 ; Dr. Elizabeth,
13.
Saxon, Mrs. Elizabeth Lisle, 16, 453, 457 ; Ad-
dress, The Truth Shall Make You Free. 248-
252.
Sayles, Mrs. Lita Harney, 1 1, 50, 1 18 ; Address.
Co-operation, the Law of the New Civiliza-
tion. 152 168.
Bcatcherd, Mrs. Alice (Mrs. Oliver), 9, 15, 10,
1 1. 15, 19, 50, I is, 119: Address, Legal « on-
ditlonsot Women In the Three Kingdoms,
229-237.
School Suffrage, 107; In England. 383; In
Massachusetts. ■_'!•-!; by Mrs. Everett, 309-
31 1.
Bchu idt, Auguste, 219.
Scbroeder. Mr., 207.
Bchurz, Carl, 368
Science, Medical, 170.
Scotland, 9, 30, 232
Scudder, Eliza, 21.
Selden. .Indue, 300.
Self-Respect of Women. 350.
Seneca Kalis Convention. 322,324,327,328,
331, 330. 889, 848, 352. 307. 132.
Sentinel, The, 255.
Serao, Mathllde, 210.
Servants. B« periences of, 201,202.
Severance, Mrs. Caroline M., 272, 339, 342;
Lettered, 866.
Bewail, May Wright, 10, 11, 12, 15, lis. 1 19,
450; Address. Higher Education of Women
in the r. 8., 51-63; Organization, 220-222;
Presentation at Pioneers' Session. 860-861.
Bewail, Dr. Lucy, 97; Hon. Samuel E., 356;
Letter of, 359.
Seward, Mrs., 325.
Sex in Brain, by Helen Gardener. 369-382.
Seymour, Miss Mary l'.. 155, 157.
Shanghai. 262.
Shattuck, Mrs. Harriett* R., 13, 16, 83, 89,
35<), 450, 457 ; Address on Social Purity, 270
278
Shawj Rev. Annie H., 11, 12. 14.51, 129, 181,
35 1 ; Sermon of, 24-29; Voting for School
Committee in Massachusetts, 311-313.
Shay, Mrs.. 173: M. B. H., 175.
Shedden, Arabella, 1 , s.
Sheldon, Miss Ellen H., 11, 450.
Shepherd. Mrs. Hannah MeL., 106.
Shortridg". Mrs. S. E., 460.
Siberia. 202 392, 132.
■^tfjuul, The, 188.
Simon, Jules, 259.
Sinaitic Codex. 402.
Shiga i ore. 262.
Slavery, 248.
Smith, Gerritt. 275, 280, 349; Hannah Whit-
all, 13, 49, 4 18; Address, The Latest Evolu-
tion of the W. C. T. U., 114-116; Sarah M.,
157 : Sidney, 51.
Sniithsen, Lucy, 43.
Snow, Georgie. 456.
Social Purity. Session for Women Alone, 16,
246-291 ; Ab lition of Government Regula-
tion of Vice, York Rranch of the Society f< r,
Letter, 289; Abolition Societv (Leeds), 260;
Addr. ss of Mrs. Hoffman, 283-284 ; Age of
Consent, 256, 290 ; Bad Houses in the Coun-
try, 269: Blue Book, 266; Children Out-
raged, 263 ; Edinburgh Branch of the Feder-
ation for the Repe-l of the State Regulat on
of Vice, 49 ; Girl throws herself off London
Bridge, 271; Increase of Defectives, 275;
Incident of Girl taken to Fiance. 267 ; Li-
censed House in Antwerp, 268; Marriage,
27 1. 277, 284; Marriage Reform, 284 285;
Member of Parliament desires Age of Con-
sent Lowered, 266; Norway, 281; Rescue
Work, 274; Round Dances, 287; Putting
Criminal Law in Force, 209 ; The Starting
Point, by Dr. Caroline B. Wlnslow, 273-275 ;
Self-Rp-pcct. 287 ; Women attending meet-
ings veiled. 205
Socialists, Hit. 430.
Sociologic Society of America, 14, 50, 140, 152,
153.
Socra es 165, 181.
Som rset Club, 447.
Somerville, Mary, 73, 268.
Sot sis, 15, 60, 2 is, 225, 367; Report of, 215.
South Carolina, 181.
Southport, 229,
South wick, Anbv, 322, 356; Jos ph, 329;
Sarah H., 17.337: Thankful, 829.
S->Uth worth, Mrs. Louisa. 157.
Sorenson. Rev. C. 200.
Spain, 153, lso. 259.
Spear, Catharine Swan, 17.
Spencer. Herbert, 375. 406.
Sperrv. Han ah H., 456, 457.
Spit/.ka, Dr. E. C , 372 ; L tier of, 381-382.
Spotlord. Mr. C. w„ 153 ; Mrs. Jane H., 10, 11,
23, 123. 153. 15 1, 150.
Spurzheim, 380.
St. Lout*, 255.
St. *'e e-shunr. 202, 266.
Stamp Ait, 168.
Stanton, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady. 9, 10, 11, 12, 17,
is, 31.3 1. IO. 17,250 327,320, 33 1.3 10,3 13,
350,35:?. 35 I. 300. 3C.O, 881, 39S. 489, HO,
111. 153. 150; Address of Welcome, 31-39;
Reminiscences. 322-325; Closing Address,
131-488.
Stanton. Ho rv B., 356; Mr. and M>-s. Theo-
dore. 9 ; Theodore, 41 ; Letter of, 445-446.
Stanford, Mrs. Leland, 155, 468; Senator Le-
>and, 468.
State Fnir Association, Women's, 447.
State Regulation of Vice, 234. (See Social
Purity.)
Statist 08 of Criminals, Male and Female, 181.
Stead. William P., 256, 2e;5, 266.
Stearns. Mrs. Sarah Burger, 468.
Stebbins, Catharine A. F„ 17, 327.
Steer, Miss, 270.
Stepniak, 432.
Stenius, Mrs., 390, 391.
Sternberg, Count Fngern, 259.
Stevenson, Dr. Sarah Hackett, 14 ; Address,
Woman in Medicine, 169-173.
Steward, Mrs., 40, 257.
Stewart, Alvin, 349.
470
International Council of Women.
Stone, Mrs. Lucy, 15, 17, 32,46,47,75,189,
334, 338, 340, 341, 343, 354, 357, 300, 366,
398, 448 ; Address, on Legal Conditions, 241-
245 ; The Advance in Fifty Years, 331-
335.
Stone, Catharine, 42 ; Chief Justice, 176.
Storthing, The, (Norway), 280.
Stowell, Mrs. Louisa Reed, 12, 49, 457; Ad-
dress, Retrospection, 72-75.
Stowe, Harriet Keecher, 440.
Stuart. Elizabeth G.. 18; The Power of
Thought, 420 ; Professor, 254, 259.
Studies at Home, Society to Encourage, 447.
Students, Association (Denmark), 447.
Sturge, Emily and Helen M , 42 ; Joseph, 322.
Subordinate Position of Women, 33.
Suffrage, Universal, 387 ; School, 16, 34, 309-
313; Municipal, 16, 34, 315-318; Kansas
Equal Suffrage Association, 129; Woman
Suffrage Association of the District of Co-
lumbia, 123. (Sec Woman Suffrage, Political
Conditions, American W. S. A., National W.
S. A., etc.)
Sumner, Charles, 302, 307, 349.
Sunderland, Rev., •"> 17.
Supreme Court of the United States, 174.
Surgerv, 173.
Suez, 262.
Swiss Schools, 220.
Switzerland, 171, 179, 259, 262.
Sweden, 178, 205, 217, 269, 394.
Swedenborg-, Brain of, 404.
Symonds, Mrs. Tunie H., 456.
T.
Table, The (London), 407.
Talmage, Rev. T. DeWitt, Letter of, 441-442.
Tanner, Sarah Jane, 42.
Tappan, 338.
Taylor. Mrs. Peter (Mentis), 9, 344, 458 ; Emily
Winslow, 17; Helen. 9.
Temple, The Temperance, by Mrs. Matilda B.
Carse, 125-127.
Temperance, 18,49; Session of, 83-128: Brit-
ish Woman's Temperance Association, 49,
116 ; Children's Work, 18, 118-119,127. 128;
Edinburgh Association. 19; Headquarters,
L26, 126; National Temperance Hospital,
123-125; London Temperance Hospital, 124;
Liquor traffic, 1 19; Loyal Legions, 118, 126:
Mottoes, 110; National Temperance Hospital
and Medical College Association, lit ; Peti-
tions. 1 15. 116; In the South. Ill; Unions, 10;
White Ribbon. 1 1<>. 111. 114,118; World's
Temperance Convention, 841; World's W.
T. U.. 114-116; Woman's Crusade. 110.
Tennessee. 131,
Testman, Miss Caroline, 203.
Texas, 157. 168, 282.
Theodoret, 404,
Theolojrv. Meadville School, 86.
Thomas, Rev. Abel ( '.. 161. 162 : Annie, 42;
Mrs. M. Louise. 15. 50, 161, 102. 223. 448,
449; Address of, 215-217; Dr. Mary F., 366 ;
Letter of. .-502-363.
Thomasson, Mr. and Mrs. J. P., 9, 41.
Thompson. Elizabeth, 455.
Thomson, M. Adeline, 17, 352, 455.
Thoreson, Cecilia. 279.
Tiburtius, Dr. Franziska, 97 ; Dr. Henriette,
458.
Tiffany, Amanda C. 157.
Timothee, Mrs. Elizabeth, 168.
Tischendorf. 402.
Tod, Miss Isabella M., 9, 41, 445.
Tome. James A., 340.
Topelius. -v.)_.
Topinard. 374.
Toronto, 116. (See Canada.)
Trades, Women in the, by Helen Campbell, 14,
146-152.
Traffic in Women for Prostitution, 262.
Travelers' Aid Society, 203. 266, 272.
Tribune, The (New Fork), 168, 339, 347, 353.
Tribune, The Woman's, 36, 188, 357, 425, 118,
455.
Truth, Sojourner, 417.
Trvgg, Mis* Alii, 18 ; Farewell, 425-427.
Tschita. 262.
Turin. 178, 211.
Turntr, Margaret A., 41, 42.
U.
Union Signal, The, 188.
Union, The German Women's. 219 ; The Lette,
220; Industrial and Educational, 15, 5»>,
198-200, 272.
Unitarian, 181 ; American Association, 84, 85,
86; Post-Office Mission, 85. sw ; Women's
Work, 13, 83-86, 88,89; Women's Auxiliary
Conference. 13, 86; Western Women's Con-
ference, 13, 88; Women as Ministers. 86, 88.
United States, 30, 51, 117, 124, 128, 130. 135,
173, 184,265,382,411.
Universities, Boston, 170; of the City of New
York, 217; Columbian, 174; Copenhagen,
179, 206, 393 ; Cornell, 77, 79; Georgetown,
174 ; Harvard, 52, 60, 174 ; Helsingfors (Fin-
land), 389. 390 : Iowa, 175; Johns Hopkins,
60, 78, 79, 166, 107 ; of Italy, 178; of Lon-
don, 97 ; of Michigan. 12, 59, 00, 179 ; North-
western, 12. 100 ; Royal (of Ireland). 97, 1 15 ;
Syracuse, :'>I7: Wesleyan, 79; Yale, 174;
Contemplated University for Gernu.n Wo-
men. 220.
Universalis! Church, 181; Women's Centen-
narv Association of, 19.
Utah, Women's Association of, 13, 10, 49, 107-
109, 171.
V.
Valparaiso, 262.
Van Buren, 389.
Vander Vooit, Paul. 102.
Vandals. 201.
Vatican Codex, 402.
Vaughn. Mary C, 360.
Venaing, Emma, 42.
Venice, 21 1 .
Vice. (See Legalized.)
Victoria. Empress of Germany. 286, 304, 153.
Victoria, Queen of England, 488.
Vienna, 185.
Vigilance Association. National (England), 16,
56 ; Letters from. 289-291.
Vigilance Council, 267.
Villa, Tommaso, 212.
Vincent, M. Dupuis, Letter of. 143-1 1 1.
Virginia. 131, :5:>7.
Viroqua, Princess, 211.
w.
Wages of Women, 301 .
Watte, Catharine V., 17, 170, 177.
Wall. Sarah E.. 17.
Wallace. Mrs. Zerelda G., 13, 18, 459 ; Address
on Moral Power of the Ballot, 428-430 ; Al-
fred Russell, 418.
Wanzer, Dr. Lucy M. P., 18,
Warner. Esther L., 14; Address, Women as
Farmers, 166-169.
Washington, George, 311, 366; Washington
City, 10, 133, 255 ; Territory, 174, 177. 339,
485, 442.
Wattles, Esther. 17 : Susan E., 17.
Waugh, Catharine G.. 175.
Webb, Deborah, 43 ; Wilhelmina, 42.
Webster, Brain of, 381.
Wecker, Johanna Frederica. 46.
Index.
471
Weld, Theodore, 350 ; Letter of, 360-362.
Wells, Mrs. Kate Gannett, '272.
Wellstood, Jennie M., 2(54.
Wendt, Mathilde P., 368.
Wesley, 404
Wetfmmslt r Iit-rieiv, 339.
WhiH-s, 319, 338, 389.
White, Armenia S., 356.
White, Blanco. Sonnet, 417.
White Cross Association, etc., 256, 257, 318,
406.
White Ribbon, 257. (Se^ Temperance.)
White Slave Trade, 251, 257-264, 266, 267,
268, 291.
Whit ncv. Anne, 134.
Whit tier, John G., 1!). 20, 113, 289,322, 354,
366; Letter of, 868-359.
Whittle, Dr. and Mr*. Ewing, 9, 458.
Wife, supported, 243; Earnings of, 228,231,
243; Wife Beaters, 235; Wife's Property in
New Fork, 325.
Wigham, Miss Eliza, 9,41,264, 344; Hannah
Maria, 42.
Wllbour, Mrs. Charlotte B., 9; Letter of, 367-
368.
Wilbur, Julia A , 17.
Wilcox, Albert O., 17. 352.
Willard, Mrs. Emma (Troy), 51,52,56,59, 167;
Mrs. Mary B., 116, 188.
Willard, Frances E„ 13, 15, 16, 18,47, 49,50,
77. 1 1 4, 1 25, 1 86, 187, 257, 305, 351, 422, 448,
Hit. 453; Addresses, on Organization, 222-
22 1; Social Purity, 286-289; Temperance,
110-3 1 I ; Woman Suffrage, 319-321; in the
Religious Symposium, 422-42 1.
William. Emperor of Germany, 305.
Williams, Mary Hamilton, 455.
Willing, Jennie Fowler, 13; Addres?, Woman
as Missionary, 86 s*.
Willis, Sarah H.. 17, 327.
Wilson, Hon. Henry. I.. 255.
Winslow. Dr. Caroline B., 16, 17.256, 352; Ad-
dress, The Starting Point, 273 275 ; Emily,
:;•_>•_>, 338.
Winter, Aloise, 219.
Wisconsin, 1,1.
Wise, Ella, 456.
Woman Question, The, 256.
Woman Suffrage, The History of, (by Mes-
dames Stanton. Anthony, and Gage), 35, 169,
329,356,368; Associations (see American.
National, Norwegian, Suffrage, etc.); Vote of
Audience Upon, 360; Movement. 327.
Woman Suffrage Conventions, L82; Cleveland,
366; Massilon, 3<>»>; Mount Vernon. 3(>(>;
Newport. 137; New York. 31: Syracuse,
;;<;»>: Worcester, 339. (See Seneca falls ; see
also Women's Suffrage.)
Womanliness, 157.
Womanly Women. 247.
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 13, 14,
16, 122, 188, 272, 289, 395.
" Woman's Congress," 218.
Woman's Condition in Italy, by Fanny Zam-
pini Salazaro, 208-214.
Woman's Influence in Law, 177.
Wotnan's Journal, The, 36, 357.
Woman's Bights Society, Norway, 280.
Woman's Bights, 206.
Woman's Temperance Publication Associa-
tion, 186-188.
Woman!1* Tribune, The. (See Tribune.)
Women on the Jury, 244.
Women to Stand by Women, 261.
Women's Liberal Associations, 229, 385.
Women's Belief Associations, 49, 107; Primary
Associations, 49, 108 ; Property Bights
Among Indians, 239.
Women's Suffrage, British National Society
for, 447 ; Edinburgh National Society for,
15, 16, 49, 229; Glasgow Association for,
49; Norwegian Women's Suffrage Associa-
tion, 49.
Wood, Dr. Ruth M., 16, 352.
Wolcott, Dr. Laura Boss, 458.
Wolfe, Miss, 31 ; 5.
Wolstonecraft, Mary, 33, 51, 52, 384, 393.
Woodhall, Mr., 384.
Worcester, 132,172; County (Massachusetts),
242.
Worden, Mrs. Anna M., 14, 50 ; Address,
Women In the Grange, 137-142.
Working Women of To-day, by Helen Camp-
bell, 140-151.
Working Women's National Beneficial Fund,
155.
Work'ng Women's Guild, 218.
World's Anti-Slavery Convention, 322.
Worm, Miss Paul ne, 393.
Worm, The, Developing into the Insect, 417.
Wright, Hon. Carroll D., 135; Elizur, 338;
Fiances E., 33, 35(i ; Mrs. Martha C, 36, 322,
323. 324, 825.
Wyoming, 175, 177, 339, 435, 442.
Yate«, Dr. Elizabeth 43.
Yorkshire, 229.
Young Woman's Christian Association, 203 ;
of England, 266.
Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associa-
tion, 49, 108.
Z.
Zahle, Miss Nathalie, 207, 89 I.
Zakr/.ewskH, Dr. Marie E., 46, 95, 96.
Zanardelli, Giuseppe, 212.
Zeuger, Mrs., H>s.
Eon Marcello, Countess, 211.
Zurich, 179.
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